This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark
Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,
County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he
continues teaching through God's Word.
There's no rules here that you have to jump through 30 hoops
before you can serve the Lord. You have to be born again.
You have to love the Lord and love people and be walking with
him and God will use you right. It's real simple, but that's the
focus of, of, of a healthy church.
And so these people also told without feigning.
And that means working in spite of seeing results.
Just keep showing up. Keep doing what it is that God
tells you to do. A joke amongst our set up tear
down team at church is that the only requirements for helping
are #1 are you breathing and #2 do you have a pulse?
All jokes aside, it doesn't take crazy qualifications to serve in
most roles at church. What it does require is a
willing spirit and love for your neighbor.
In today's message, Pastor Clark provides scriptural evidence
that God can and will use anyone who is willing to serve in His
Kingdom. We need not worry about what
we'll do. Just come with a willing heart.
Now. Here's Pastor Clark in
Revelation Chapter 2 with today's edition of Living Waters
of Grace. People come in and, and they see
all the parts of the body working together, someone
outside shoveling and, and someone, you know, helping with
the Lord's Supper, running sound or run, you know, singing and
worship and, and, and this sometimes a part in the body is
a, someone that comes in that's new, that you go up to them and
say, Hey, I'm glad you're here. It's, it's nice to see you.
What's your name? You might be the only person
that Sunday that has a chance to connect with someone else.
And that's the body of Christ. That's the love that's being
manifest in the in the midst of the church.
And so how does a church grow? And I'm not talking numerically,
of course, God does grow churches numerically.
But what's the purpose of the church growing numerically?
It isn't to be a big church. The purpose is that people were
being called to do ministry, right.
They're coming to the church to not sit in a Pew, but to say,
what is it that I can do? How can I serve?
How can I help? What's what's my gift?
Like this fellow that's moving in from Idaho, He told me,
Clark, I can help. I like to do evangelism.
And he says I'm an I'm an usher. And you know, he just has a
heart to serve his his son's 16. He says, boy, I hope he can
maybe, you know, be involved helping in a worship.
I said, sure, he can he can talk to Rick.
And you know, there there's no rules here that you have to jump
through 30 hoops before you can serve the Lord.
You have to be born again. You have to love the Lord and
love people and be walking with him and God will use you right.
It's real simple, but that's the focus of of of a healthy church.
And so these people also told without feigning and that means
working in spite of seeing results.
This keep showing up, keep doing what it is that God tells you to
do. And God's the one that brings
the harvest in his time. They also had this sacrificial
heart and I think of as a small church, how you guys give of
your time and how you give financially.
It's a blessing we never have to beg for money.
We never have to push about money.
The Holy Spirit is the one that puts it on your heart what it is
that you're to give. And that's between you and the
Lord. And it's a wonderful thing to be
able to give freely without condemnation or without guilt.
And as we know we can't ever out give God.
I mean, I challenge my own heart as the Lord prospers me.
I always want to advance what it is I personally sacrifice before
the Lord. And sometimes we all can think,
well, if I didn't give as much as I gave to the church, I could
be driving a new car. You ever think that the payment
I could be using for. I mean, that's ridiculous.
Don't think that way, but our flesh sometimes sinks that way.
It's just normal for all of us because we're still human.
But it's cool to be content with what we have live within our
means, actually live under our means.
My dad taught me that many years ago.
He was a president of a company. And one of the big shots from
this chairman of the board said, well, Clark, how many acres do
you have? And my dad says I got a probably
about 1/4 of an acre. And they expected my dad,
because of the position he was in, to have a big mansion and
all that. My dad lived in a very modest
home. He turned on the company
limousine. He drove a Ford Pinto station
wagon. He didn't park in the director
for the president and he parked somewhere else.
It's just my dad set that temperament for my brother and I
as an example. He was a very, very sacrificial,
humble man. And what he did with his
resources and finances was always for the sake of helping
other people and never consumed with himself.
That's an amazing individual. But anyway, Ephesus, this is the
kind of church they have. They are, but it says in verse
4, then the accusation comes in spite of all the good things
they're doing. He says, I had this one thing
against you. You've left your first love as a
pastor. I have to continually keep
myself in the love of God. I'm like you guys.
I got a wife, I got children, I got grandchildren, I got son in
law's, I got a job, I got all kinds of things that my mind can
get focused on. And those are all good things to
be focused on. But sometimes I can allow things
in everyday life to take my focus off of my relationship
with the Lord. You know what I mean?
If I don't start my day with the Lord and walk with the Lord
through that day and end my day with the Lord, my heart will not
be full of this first love. My relationship with Cindy, 38
years of marriage. There was years, I have to admit
to you people that I was not loving her the way Christ told
me I'm to love his church the way he loves his church.
And so I was inadequate in the sense of my emotional connection
with my wife. I was there, I showed up, I paid
the bills, I did whatever a husband's supposed to do, but I
was not connecting with her needs as a woman in the sense of
her emotional needs. And so the reason I wasn't, I
was focused on my job and my career and my success and my
golf clubs and my time and this and that and my Ford Thunderbird
or whatever. And, and I sacrificed some years
that I look back on. I say, Lord, it's only your
mercy that you kept us together all these years, but God was
merciful. He broke me and he humbled me
and he gave me an amazing woman that stood beside me and never
gave up on me. And so 38 years I can say to you
guys today, honestly, I love Cindy today more than I love her
when I first met her. She is an amazing woman.
I, I never tire of looking at her face when I wake up in the
morning. I never look at her and say, why
did I end up with her. Now she might say that about me,
especially now with my scar now, but but you know, that's a work
of God's Spirit. It's a work of his grace and,
and and it's nothing I've done, but it's as I've yielded myself
to the Lord and won his will, not mine.
He restores to me the joy of my salvation and to you too.
And so the the but I have to work on my relationship with
Cindy. When she asked me things and
says things, I got to listen and I got to say, OK God, how am I
to respond here? Sometimes I have to admit she
still drives me crazy. I know I drive her crazy at
times too, but that's just two people that are different living
together in the same house, being married.
We're still different even after 30, but there's so many things
that we're a lot alike. When she fell and broke her
shoulder, the Bible says the two shall become one flesh.
I noticed the next time my shoulder was hurting.
It's really bizarre. And then one day I'm like on a
business trip and I running out of Panera Bread because I forgot
my wallet and I'm wearing these clogged shoes and I was running
faster and the shoes stayed with me.
All of a sudden I knew I was falling and I started going like
this man. I banged my hand and thank God I
didn't break anything. And I called her later and told
her what happened. She's man, my arm, my hand was
hurting today. I mean, this, it's just weird
how you know that there is this element of this, this one, this
we have in this relationship. But I look at that love with my
wife and it's parallel to how my relationship needs to be with
the Lord. If my love with Christ is where
it needs to be, I guarantee my love with Cindy will be where it
needs to be. But if my love with Christ isn't
where it needs to be, I'm not going to be able to be what it
is. She needs me to be as her
husband because Christ is not the center of my life.
And so every day as a husband, as a father, the grandfather is
an employee, as a pastor, all the roles that I have, and you
have many different roles too, as men and women and children, I
have to persevere and keep myself in the love of God.
The Scriptures actually say to keep yourself in the love of
God. So my devotion to Jesus has to
be above everything else. And when I look at the church
and I pray for you guys every day, I go by the names and a
list. I think, OK, where are they with
the Lord or where aren't they with the Lord?
That's not an outward judgement. It's just like God.
I pray that they're digging deep into you and they're finding in
you everything they need. That's the heart of a pastor.
That's the heart of the Lord for all of us.
He wants you and me to be in love with Jesus.
And if we are, He knows our lives are going to be whole and
satisfying and protected from sin and destruction and stupid
moves and decisions. So my devotion to Jesus in the
Church of Ephesus, he's got this concern that in spite of all
this outward biblical stuff they're doing, they've moved
away from loving Jesus. And when you love Jesus, you're
fervent about him. You're uninhibited.
You know, you got a friend, the neighbor or relative.
You're not like, oh, should I tell him about the Lord or
should I bring it up? Man, you could care less what
anybody thinks. You just want to shop from the
rooftops. Jesus is Lord, I love him.
Jesus did this for me and he did that and I prayed and he you
don't care if people think you're nuts because you're so in
love with the Lord. But it when you find yourself a
little bit inhibited, embarrassed maybe about your
faith, wondering if it's going to affect your relationship with
people. You're moving away from your
first love. Whenever you don't have a desire
to read the word and to be in the word, not because we're
going through the Bible day by day through the Bible at the end
of the year, you can say, hey, I did it, but you're going through
it because you can't wait to hear God's voice to your heart
for today. Fresh mana for today, something
God's giving you this for your relationship with him.
As I got those verses into that surgery, boy, that was so
important. I said, Lord, I need a word from
you. I need you to give something to
me. And he did and I held it in my
pocket by my heart so I could look at it and be reminded of
his faithfulness. The relationship has to be
personal. A husband can be father on in
the Lord or the wife and and that's not good because you
can't go in the fumes of another person's relationship.
You guys can't live on the fumes of a sermon for a week.
Hopefully it spurs you and encourages you and gives you a
little bit of encouragement. You're right, but you're going
home because of your relationship with Jesus that you
had prior to even coming to church on Sunday and you're
walking close with him. It's like the couples in the
honeymoon when you first met your your spouse.
So the person you were going to eventually end up marrying, you
couldn't wait to see them. You were on the phone with them
texting. I remember Jess and Dan met each
other in eHarmony. How many hours did you guys
spend on the phone? 6A hour a day.
Plus they're emailing. I mean, I mean, it was crazy,
you know? And that is the picture of the
relationship with our Lord, that we are talking to him all day
long and we're never hearing something that we've heard
before. We're bored.
It's a it's a, this is a wonderful relationship, But
whenever you start to take each other for granted in the
relationship, or do you ever take the Lord for granted?
Oh, yeah. I'm going to go to heaven
someday. That's nice.
You know, Lord loves me. Yeah.
Eternal life. That's great, but everything
else is crowded out the excitement of what that all
means. You're beginning to take Him for
granted. You're moving from your first
love when life begins to be routine and boring and
uneventful and this a drag. You've left your first love and
then your relationship with the Lord is in danger when you're
neglecting worshipping God and worship.
This isn't here with Rick and the guys on Sunday morning.
Worship is in your car with your CD.
Worship is in your home with your Bible open where you're
just praising God and thank thanking him for how much he
loves you and all that he's done and, and how great he is and how
he's created the universe and how he has his hand on
everything that's going on in the world at the same time with
every life and every individual. It's just mind blowing.
And so you worship God and you're, you're loving God.
You find yourself serving God, giving of your your livelihood
for God's work, helping brothers and sisters, helping neighbors,
helping people that don't know the Lord doesn't matter because
you love the Lord. Dan and I were digging this
woman out yesterday and she was like I said, well, where you got
to go? She's like, how old is that
Lady? 80s or something?
Yeah, she's out there with a shovel.
And you know, we say, hey man, no, we'll, we'll do it until
we're over there helping. I said, where are you going?
She said I got to go to Mass. I said, when She said 4:00, I
said in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are
absolved. You can stay home.
She thought I was kidding. I said, no, I'm a pastor.
You just take it easy. The Lord knows you can't get out
here today. But she was so determined to go,
but we were digging her out and and she says, Oh, I can't, I
feel so bad. I'm making, I say, hey, we're
doing this because we love Jesus.
We're doing this because of him, you know, And I said, plus you
have some of those pizzelles in the house and those cookies.
And she said, all I do is she was all excited.
She went in and got him and brought him out to us, you know,
but but seriously, you know, we, we just did it because it's part
of this, what you do as a follower of Christ and you love
him. And the Bible told the church in
Ephesus, in the book of Ephesians, that they were seated
with Christ Jesus in heavenly places.
That's our position right now spiritually, you're in the
heavenly places with Christ where everything that is his is
yours, where we can't be lifted up any higher than he has us
right now. It's incredible what our
inheritance is in Christ, but where are you with that right
now, today? Where is your relationship with
the Lord? How are you doing with Jesus
Christ? He warns them that if they don't
repent, and I talked about repentance pretty extensively
last week. Repentance is the realization I
can't live like this anymore. I can't go through this
spiritual fog like this anymore. I'm done with this waste of time
and energy and things that aren't going to last.
And boy, I'll tell you when, when you, when you're dealing
with some kind of cancer, some kind of life potential problem,
you start realizing how short your life is, right?
All of us and one day all of us, I don't care how young you are
in here, you're going to be in a grave if Christ hasn't come yet
and your body is going to rot and you're just going to have
bones in there. I mean, there's nothing left.
Your spirit will be with the Lord.
The Bible says to be absent the bodies, to be present with the
Lord, everything you live for. And if it isn't for Christ is
all going to be a waste. It's all going to burn.
And I think as God gives me days on this earth, my whole desire
is for you guys and for his work.
That's the focus of my heart. I want to be around God willing
for my kids and to see my grandkids grow up and to see
them follow the Lord. That's that's the passion and
also that the days that I'm living, even though I got a lot
of things like you guys work and all these other things that can
destroy. I want my life to count for
eternity so that whenever I'm done and I stand before the
Lord, we can hear well done, good and faithful servant.
But he's warning them if you don't repent from where you've
fallen and whenever your first love isn't there, you got to
admit you're backslidden. He says repent and go back and
do the first works or I will come to you and remove the
lampstand from its place. Unless you repent doesn't mean
you're losing your salvation, and it means your ability to
influence the community as a church is gone.
This church built back in 1895 used to have 350 people coming
on Sundays, 2 services, fantastic Sunday school thing,
all that. I got the book of the pastors
and the history when they started moving away from the
truth of the Word of God, when they started changing things and
doing things that weren't about Jesus but were about the
denomination and programs and all that.
The crowd wasn't alive anymore. The church didn't have a light
anymore and it eventually church died.
It closed down the lampstand. Lampstand was removed from this
place many years ago. And God, I believe by His grace,
has put it in our midst again. The light of Jesus Christ is in
this place in the lives of all you folks.
It isn't the building, it's the people that inhabit the
building. But this church, Jesus says, is
in danger an Ephesus of losing the light.
And the judgment, he said, will come now, not later on.
He will remove the influence, the salt, the light from their
own lives and from the community, and they're going to
be in really, really bad shape. And of course, as I said,
Ephesus today is a pale image of what it once was.
These people separated themselves from false doctrine.
And I guarantee one thing for sure, we will not tolerate any
false teaching in this church at all.
Someone has some kind of weird teaching that's not Apostolic
and it's not historical Christian teaching.
I don't have time for it. You know, there is no new stuff
coming out. People are saying let's go find
this new thing and find that new thing.
All it is the Bible says is winds, winds of doctrine that
blow into the church to try to get people off the truth of
God's word. And this church was very strong
when it's it's separated itself from the false doctrines and the
false deeds. He uses this term Nicolaitans,
it says conquering the people. The Nicolaitans were the type of
people that wanted to Lord it over the people in the church.
They wanted to control the people.
They wanted to manipulate them. They wanted the the people in
the church to pay homage to them as leaders.
And the the church wasn't there to serve the Lord and the
people. These people were trying to make
these people serve them. It was all about them.
And heresy, it was the development back then of the
clergy and lady where the paid professionals, the people had
the seminary degree or the doctoral degree or all that
stuff. They were like here and
everybody would look up to them and think, Oh my look, they do
this, they do that, their robes or whatever.
The Bible never developed a, a hierarchical system in, in
regard to the body of Christ. As I said in the beginning,
Christ is the head and we're all at his feet.
We all have different gifts and abilities, and pastors or elders
have a responsibility to shepherd the flock of God in the
sense of the way the Scriptures teach us to serve the flock but
not to Lord it over the people. You're more important than I am.
The leadership of the church is supposed to be at the bottom of
the body, lifting the people up in their relationship with the
Lord. We're the least in the church,
and you're the most in the church.
That's how the Lord has developed his Kingdom.
Jesus said, if any of you want to be great, let him first be
his servant. He who is first must be last.
So how do we regain our first love?
Let's just begin to to close down here.
If you're here today and you're thinking, Clark, I hear what
you're saying about this and down deep inside me and I know
I've drifted and, and sometimes we think, why can I change or
can I change? It's all matter of your heart
and your will. If you can be here today and
just be honest and say I've slipped from my first love and I
want to be restored to it, that's repentance.
The good news is that you can repent.
I can repent. And so you repent and then you
pray and you say, Lord restore to me this first love
relationship. And you start in a practical way
this week, being the Word every day, not out of ritual or duty,
but because you want to hear from the Lord, because you love
Him by word. Have I hid in my heart?
Then I might not sin against you.
Be in the Word, and when you're in the Word, obey what it's
saying. If the Lord's been speaking to
you about something, you haven't been doing it.
Stop not doing it and just start doing it.
And that will again restore that love relationship with the Lord.
Worship Him, fellowship, get together with one another and
fellowship. Hang out, attend the activities
of the church when you can. Don't be a Lone Ranger.
Don't be aloof. Let your brothers and sisters
know you need them and they need you, and then find a place to
serve. I guarantee whenever you start
serving in the church, you start getting hot.
You just, there's a, there's a special presence of God that
comes on your life when you begin to actively do something
in the body to help others. The Lord stirs you up.
He gives you abilities and skills and gifts that you never
knew you had. And what happens to he keeps you
closer to himself when you're serving him.
Believe me, I would not be where I am on my walk with the Lord
right now if I wasn't being responsible to be a pastor,
which is what he called me to do.
I would be in bad shape right now spiritually.
And for years I quenched God because I didn't want to, you
know, sort of like, you know, let someone else do it, you
know? But I'm so thankful.
It keeps my heart close to the fire.
I don't have a choice. Each week I need to be walking
with God as close as I can so that I don't defame him and I
don't bring reproach upon him and I don't let you guys down
and pray for me. Pray, please pray for me.
I need your prayers every day in order to do what it is the Lord
has called me to do. And then he ends it up here.
If you, if you're involved this way and you're, you're living in
these ways in regard to first love, the good news is, is that
you will overcome. If you have an ear to hear today
what the spirits saying to the church.
He says to him who overcomes this means the person who's
walking in victory, walking in deep relationship with Christ.
If you're walking in first love, you're going to overcome no
matter what happens in your life, no matter what the doctor
diagnosis, no matter what happens in the home or the
family or the situation, it's not going to tear you away from
the power of God because you're living in a life of supernatural
victory and abundance. Jesus says I've come that you
might have life in John 1010 and that you might have it more
abundantly. Christ came to give us a life
that's supernatural and we all can have it despite being in
love with the Lord, right? Don't be careless and neglecting
what it is He's asked of us as His church and what He asked of
the Church of Ephesus. It's real real simple, real,
real basic. But it's real easy to drift,
isn't it? But it's real easy to repent
too, right? This has been Living Waters of
Grace with Pastor Clark. We're going through the
challenging and also intriguing Book of Revelation.
Whether you're a fan of reading ahead in books of fiction,
there's such a benefit to reading ahead in the Bible to
read about how it all ends. But in an interesting turn of
events, the Book of Revelation is not really the end, but
rather the beginning. It's the end of life as we know
it here on earth, but there's so much to look forward to.
But what comes after all? The judgement of the earth and
those who reject God. There's a lot to work through,
and it can be heartbreaking to read through the intense
judgements and wrath that will come on those who hate God with
all their might. The thing is, God has given
chance upon chance to these people.
They don't want it. So the outcome is that there are
judgements and consequences for those who've rejected the good
news and the gift of salvation that's offered through Jesus's
death and resurrection. Are you one who has heard about
these things but doesn't really want it because you want to live
life on your terms? Trust me, living for Jesus is so
much better. That doesn't mean it will be
easy, but as you listen and read through Revelation with us,
you'll come to a stark realization that you don't want
to be on earth when the apocalypse happens.
So check out Calvary Chapel online.com to learn how to come
to a saving grace through faith that will allow you to be with
Jesus for eternity. We'd also love to meet you in
person at Calvary Chapel Westmoreland.
Come join us at 400 E Pittsburgh St.
Ste. 6B in Greensburg, PA 15601. This has been living waters of
grace.