Reverend Ray Osborne, Senior Minister
Please Note That Most Messages Follow
The Revised Common Lectionary

A Psalm and A Prayer of Worship:
Leader: O sing to the Lord a new song,
People: For our God has done wonderful things!
Leader: Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth,
People: Lift your voices in praise and shout for joy!
Leader: For the Lord is a righteous judge who come in victory,
People: And all the earth will worship his Holy Name!
Leader: The Lord be with you
People: And with you also
Leader: Let us pray

Gracious and Loving God, you call us to gather as one to sing your praises and to give thanks for all that life has to offer. We pray that you remind us, through our worship, that we are all part of one great mission plan. That we are called to receive your love and mercy, and in turn, pour out all with which we have been blessed, to others around us locally and globally. In Jesus name. Amen.

I sure do like to win - don’t you? Some of my favorite times are those times of winning! The desire to win is something that I have carried throughout the entire journey of my life. It is something that I will probably carry with me to my grave as I go out of this world striving even then to win! I enjoy being successful. Some of my most memorable times are those when I have been successful. There’s nothing like spending time and energy writing a paper and getting that paper back with an “A” on it! I never got “A’s” in high school I was too busy being a competitive boy. My desire to be a winner during that part of my life was channeled in directions other than academia. My interests were more in sports, gangs, peer groups, cars and girls. Now as I face the challenge of completing graduate school, I thrive for “A’s,” it’s the only means of being competitive and showing success on this part of my life’s journey.

You enjoy winning too. Ladies you love it when you beat a man at a game or sport don’t you? Young people you love to when those ball games don’t you? Sure you do! We all love to win and be successful.

However, winning and success are not always attainable are they? The reality is that there are days and moments in my life that I feel like a complete loser. Life for me is a continuous battle. There are both opportunities and challenges every single day our Lord allows us to live. I don’t know about you but sometimes those challenges overwhelm me. There are days I feel like a centipede with a bunion on every toe!

There are times that when I get done speaking, I sink into the solitude of my study realizing that I never got the sermon on the runway yet alone off the ground! It just didn’t fly and when those times come I feel like a failure. I don’t know anyone who enjoys feeling like a loser, a failure, or a centipede with a bunion on every toe!

Because I think we all need it, I want to share with you this morning some words of encouragement. I want to affirm you this morning and then when we close the service, I want us to affirm one another. I’ll share with you how we are going to that when we get there okay?

First, I want you to know is that you ARE a winner! You are NOT a loser! I don’t want this to sound like some get rich quick motivational speech. I don’t have any desire to use psychology on you or brainwash you this morning, or even trick you into thinking and believing you are a winner. So sit back and relax – the pressure is off!

What I want to do is take God’s Word and simply read it to you and pray that His Holy Spirit will open your eyes and your heart to HIS understanding. The Scriptures I read to you may not make a lot of sense in our humanistic mode of understanding, but the Bible says “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.” (Proverbs 3:5 NRSV) The KJV says, “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

Can I ask you to do me a favor this morning and keep an open mind and an open heart? Can I ask you this morning to entertain the possibility that God has brought you here for a very specific reason? And that reason is because He has something He wants to say to you.

Again, the first thing I want you to know is that you ARE a winner! You are NOT a loser! There is a verse of Scripture in the New Testament that should make that very clear to us. Let me read it to you:

What is your concept of God this morning? I remember one night when I was speaking to our youth I asked a question that was very similar and one person’s response was “God is everything.” God is everything. A three word answer yet very theologically profound! I tend to agree. When I think about God and all that God is I come to the conclusion that God is far too complex for me to completely understand. In all that I read about God I find that there remains a mystery about Him that we will never know and I think He intentionally does that.

God is kinder than the kindest person. God’s anger and wrath can annihilate the world in an instant. God is wiser than the wisest human. God is more knowledgeable than all the great minds of history put together. God is smarter than anyone or anything. Therefore we are forced to conclude that God would NEVER, EVER allow His only Son to die for a loser. By the very fact that God gave His Only Son to die for you and for me – we are all WINNERS this morning!

I believe with all my heart that there is value in every human life and that value is measured by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So if you came here this morning feeling like a loser you better leave KNOWING you are a winner! The Son of the living God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Your God, My God, loved us enough to lay down His life for us, to die for us, and brother, sister, that makes all of us WINNERS this morning!

Remember growing up and all those "pick-up" games we use to play? I lived in a housing development as a boy and we would always get together and play backyard basketball, baseball, or football. We'd choose captains. I always wanted to be picked to be a team captain but it never happened. I can still remember the feelings of disappointment. After we picked captains we would all line up and the two captains would choose their teams. Do you know what it was like to be the biggest youth and always last to be picked for a team? It was an almost nightly torture that I would subject myself to because I wanted to play.

Our Gospel reading this morning in John says:

"I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

You did not choose me but I chose you."

You see? You and I have been chosen by the greatest Captain in the World, to play for the Greatest team in the World, owned by the Greatest person in the World!

We’re off to a good start aren’t we? And we’ve only just begun! It gets better listen!

I can see your wheels turning this morning; just like last Sunday we’re connecting aren’t we?

What about the battles? What about those daily challenges? See, I have always known that because of the cross and the empty tomb I was a winner in eternity, but I there are many times I need help today – now. It’s those nasty, ugly, often offending challenges that I have trouble with. You might say that I feel like a situational loser sometimes. What about THOSE times? Things pile in and no matter how hard I look I can’t see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. What about those times?

I went through one of those times not too long ago. I felt like what I was doing didn’t matter. I felt like my ministry was making no difference in anyone’s life. I was down for the count and I almost threw in the towel. See that’s what happens when we start seeing ourselves as losers or as I felt in this instance, a failure. We can’t see any possible way that things will ever get better and so we just give up.

There are times when my children are outside playing and when they least expect it, or when they do not perceive danger, they fall down and get hurt. I run to them, I pick them up, dust off their clothes, put my arms around them, give them a kiss, tell them I love them and that everything will get better.

One day, a day when I had already decided to give up and throw in the towel, God did what no one else could have possibly done. He took a depressed, beaten pastor and picked him up off the ground, dusted off his clothes, put His arms around me and said, “I have seen your efforts and work. I know the love that you showed for my sake in serving the saints.” I was driving down the road listening to my favorite contemporary Christian station when they read the verse of the day and it said, “For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do.” Hebrews 6:10.

I came to my office and I fell on my face before God asking His forgiveness for ever doubting.

You see God is like our cheerleader! All the while we are thinking that we are defeated God is saying, NO! NO! NO! You are NOT defeated!

Listen to the text this morning, “for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith.” (1 John 5:4 NRSV)

Can’t you hear Him cheering us on this morning? “GO! GO! GO! Don’t give up!!! You are born again through my Son Jesus Christ! You are CONQUERS! Believe in ME! Believe in my SON! USE YOUR FAITH! By FAITH THE VICTORY IS YOURS!!!”

Someone once said, “It’s not wither you win or lose but how you play the game.” They’re right! If we use faith in God as our methodology for playing the game – then we WIN!

Let us pray.

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