Receiving Christ

Gift cards make great stocking stuffers—just as long as you don’t stuff them in a drawer and forget about them after the holidays. Americans are expected to spend nearly $30 billion on gift cards this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. Restaurant gift cards are the most popular, making up one-third of those sales.

Most of those gift cards will be redeemed. Paytronix, which tracks restaurant gift card sales, says around 70% of gift cards are used within six months. But many cards—tens of billions of dollars’ worth—wind up forgotten or otherwise unused. That’s when the life of a gift card gets more complicated, with expiration dates or inactivity fees that can vary by state.

After clothing, gift cards will be the most popular present this holiday season. Nearly half of Americans plan to give them, according to the National Retail Federation. But many will remain unspent.

Gift cards get lost or forgotten, or recipients hang on to them for a special occasion. In a July survey, Bankrate found that 47% of U.S. adults had at least one unspent gift card or voucher. The average value of unused gift cards is $187 per person, a total of $23 billion.

While it may take gift cards years to expire, experts say it’s still wise to spend them quickly. Some cards—especially generic cash cards from Visa or MasterCard—will start accruing inactivity fees if they’re not used for a year, which eats away at their value. Inflation also makes cards less valuable over time. And if a retail store closes or goes bankrupt, a gift card could be worthless.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the gifts of God (his promises, salvation, spiritual gifts, talents, the Bible) often remain unused, unopened by faith, and neglected by so many people.

Some people love them, some people hate them. Worse, a large number of us who receive them on special occasions are indifferent to them, or even forget about them entirely. Such is the sad fate of gift cards – millions of which go unused each year and have a collective value estimated to be in the billions of dollars.

Almost two-thirds of American consumers have at least one unspent gift card tucked away in a drawer, pocket, wallet, or purse. And at least half of those consumers lose a gift card before they use it, according to a new report from Credit Summit. The report said there is as much as $21 billion of unspent money tied up in unused and lost gift cards. Of those surveyed, a majority of respondents said their unredeemed cards were worth $200 or less.

Rebecca Stumpf, an editor with Credit Summit, said “Gift cards are extremely popular and almost everyone enjoys getting them. But many people leave them sitting in a drawer to redeem on a special occasion. Use them, don’t save them. If someone has given you a gift card, they want you to spend the money.”

So why aren’t we using up what people have taken the trouble to give us? According to Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst with CreditCards.com and Bankrate.com:

Inertia is a big factor. Sometimes the gift card is for a store that you don’t particularly like or it’s not convenient to go there. Still, ignoring the gift of free money is unwise. They’re not going to get more valuable over time; it’s the exact opposite, as inflation eats away at the value. And the longer you hold onto these unused gift cards, the more likely you are to lose them or forget about them or have the store go out of business.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In the same way, the gifts of God (salvation, spiritual gifts, talents, the Bible) often remain unused, unopened by faith, and neglected by so many people.

Bible scholar N.T. Wright uses the analogy of waking up in the morning for how some people come to Christ through a dramatic, instant conversion and others come to Christ through a gradual conversion:

Waking up offers one of the most basic pictures of what can happen when God takes a hand in someone's life. There are classic alarm-clock stories, Saul of Tarsus on the road to Damascus, blinded by a sudden light, stunned and speechless, discovered that the God he had worshipped had revealed himself in the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. John Wesley found his heart becoming strangely warm and he never looked back. They and a few others are the famous ones, but there are millions more.

And there are many stories, thought they don't hit the headlines in the same way, of the half-awake and half-asleep variety. Some people take months, years, maybe even decades, during which they aren't sure whether they're on the outside of Christian faith looking in, or on the inside looking around to see if it's real.

As with ordinary waking up, there are many people who are somewhere in between. But the point is that there's such a thing as being asleep, and there's such a thing as being awake. And it's important to tell the difference, and to be sure you're awake by the time you have to be up and ready for action, whatever that action may be.

Nicole Cliffe became a Christian on July 7, 2015, after what she called "a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism." "The idea of a benign deity who created and loved us," she writes, "was obviously nonsense, and all that awaited us beyond the grave was joyful oblivion … I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings." But here's how she describes what happened to her:

First, I was worried about my child. One time I said "Be with me" to an empty room. It was embarrassing. I didn't know why I said it, or to whom. I brushed it off, I moved on, the situation resolved itself, I didn't think about it again.

Second, I came across John Ortberg's CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John's daughters are dear friends, and they have always struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I read the article. Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity."I believe in sufficient depravity," he responded immediately. "I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, 'I merited this.'" A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.

She read more Christian books and every time she cried all over again. She emailed a Christian friend and asked if she could talk about Jesus. She writes:

But about an hour before our call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian … I was crying constantly while thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus really was who he said he was … So when my friend called, I told her, awkwardly, that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and we prayed … Since then, I have been dunked by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung "Be Thou My Vision" and celebrated Communion on a beach, while weirded-out Californians tiptoed around me. I go to church. I pray …

[Evan after accepting Christ] I continue to cry a lot. [I read a news article] that literally sank me to my knees at how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be in the face of that brokenness. My Christian conversion has granted me no simplicity. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I feel about money, messed up my public persona … Obviously, it's been very beautiful.

New York magazine interviewed several former inmates and asked them to describe their first hours or day of freedom. These men had been wrongfully convicted, but their first taste of freedom is no different than that of the guilty—or even those who have been forgiven by Christ. So pick your favorite quote, or two, or use all three:

Jeffrey Deskovic, age 41, spent 16 years in prison. He was freed on September 20, 2006:

At times I wasn't quite sure whether I really was out and free. I felt like a finger was tapping me on the back and saying, "What are you doing? They belong out here, but you don't. They don't really realize that you don't." So I just did something that I wanted to do for a long time: I wanted to sit outside in the nighttime and not have to go inside … I could see a few stars and the lights on in some of the other houses. It was just a minor thing that had been taken away from me.

Fernando Bermudez, age 46, spent 18 years in prison. He was freed on November 20, 2009:

The first thing I did, I went running in Inwood Hill Park … where I had all these childhood memories of wanting to be a geologist. I used to pick rocks and collect insects before I became less of a nerd and more a person in trouble. I'm coming off my run, and I'm doing something I had sorely missed: I'm looking at a tree, and I'm just admiring it. I had been deprived of nature for so long … I finally got to feel the bark. I was crying hugging the tree.

Derrick Hamilton, age 49, spent 21 years in prison. He was freed on December 7, 2011:

The day I walked out, my wife, my nephew, and my son was in the car waiting for me. There was a church right around the corner. I would always listen to the bells ringing when I was in jail. I didn't even know where the church really was. But I would pray when I would hear the bells. It was my only opportunity to pray at the same time people on the outside was praying. When I got out, that was one of the first things I wanted to do, just go around and pray in that church. I went in and thanked God for my release … Going into that church, it was like being born again.

Speaking about the power of Christ to redeem sinners and build his church, Russell Moore wrote:

The next Billy Graham might be drunk right now. The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might currently be a misogynistic, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist. The next Charles Spurgeon might be managing an abortion clinic today. The next Augustine of Hippo might be a sexually promiscuous cult member right now, just like, come to think of it, the first Augustine of Hippo was.

But the Spirit of God can turn all that around. And seems to delight to do so. The new birth doesn't just transform lives, creating repentance and faith; it also provides new leadership to the church, and fulfills Jesus' promise to gift his church with everything needed for her onward march through space and time (Eph. 4:8-16).

I've heard people say, "I'm checking out Christianity, but I also understand Christians can't do this and the Bible says you're supposed to do that. You're supposed to love the poor or you're supposed to give up sex outside of marriage. I can't accept that." So people want to come to Christ with a list of conditions.

But the real question is this: Is there a God who is the source of all beauty and glory and life, and if knowing Christ will fill your life with his goodness and power and joy, so that you would live with him in endless ages with his life increasing in you every day? If that's true, you wouldn't say things like, "You mean, I have to give up ___ (like sex or something else)."

Let's say you have a friend who is dying of some terrible disease. So you take him to the doctor and the doctor says, "I have a remedy for you. If you just follow my advice you will be healed and you will live a long and fruitful life, but there's only one problem: while you're taking my remedy you can't eat chocolate." Now what if your friend turned to you and said, "Forget it. No chocolate? What's the use of living? I'll follow the doctor's remedy, but I will also keep eating chocolate."

If Christ is really God, then all the conditions are gone. To know Jesus Christ is to say, "Lord, anywhere your will touches my life, anywhere your Word speaks, I will say, "Lord, I will obey. There are no conditions anymore." If he's really God, he can't just be a supplement. We have to come to him and say, "Okay, Lord, I'm willing to let you start a complete reordering of my life."

Todd Skinner was one of the most respected rock climbers of his generation, but his greatest challenge was tackling Trango Tower, the world's highest freestanding spire, with a near-vertical drop. It's also located in one of the most hostile and remote regions on the planet. When Todd went to find a sponsor for his expedition to free-climb Trango Tower, the experts told the sponsors that a wall that big, in a place that remote, was simply not meant to be climbed.

But Todd moved forward anyway, finding the right climbing team, and planning logistics like travel, food, jeeps, porters, permits, equipment, clothing, and tents. The biggest challenge came when, after years of preparation and a rugged 10-day cross-country trek, the climbers came face-to-face with the largest, tallest, smoothest, steepest rock wall they had ever seen.

Here's how Todd described that moment: "We turned a corner and there it was … Trango Tower rose stunningly before us. The reality hit us like a shock wave. We stopped dead in the middle of the track … no amount of bluff or bravado could hide the fact that we were absolutely horrified."

The team members had come for this challenge, but now it seemed too high, too vertical, too difficult, even for some of the best bigwall climbers in the world. Todd realized that there was only one way forward. In his words, they had to "get on the wall" even if they weren't completely prepared. Todd said,

The final danger in the preparation process of an expedition is the tendency to postpone leaving until every question has been answered, forgetting that the mountain is the only place the answers can definitively be found. … No matter how well prepared you are, how honed your climbing skills, how vast your expertise, you cannot climb the mountain if you don't get to it.

So Todd and his three teammates "got on the wall." After 60 days on the wall, they finally reached the summit. Despite years of preparation and training, much of what they learned about climbing the tower was only learned after they "got on the wall."

You have undoubtedly been on an elevator that bears his name. Otis elevators have been the industry standard for more than 150 years. While Elisha Otis did not invent the elevator, he did devise the braking system that ensured its safety. At the time, most elevators were little more than open platforms, and they'd come apart and people would be seriously injured if the cable broke. And without a trustworthy braking system, elevators were earthbound and building heights were limited to a mere six stories. With it, the sky was the limit. The braking system for elevators made modern skyscrapers possible.

But initially Elisha Otis had trouble selling his elevators, until 1854 when he concocted a creative sales pitch at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in Manhattan. Every hour at the exposition, the World's Fair of its day, Otis stepped into his machine. He gave the order to an assistant who cut the rope. The crowd held its breath. The brake kicked in, the elevator stopped and Otis announced: "All safe, gentlemen. All safe."

With this demonstration, Otis quickly sold his first three elevators for $300 apiece. Today, New York City alone has about 70,000 elevators, and it's estimated that the equivalent of the world's population travels on an Otis elevator, escalator, or moving walkway every three days.

Possible Preaching Angles: Faith; Trust; Belief—This story shows the critical difference between knowing about something or someone and putting your faith in something or someone.

The Atlantic magazine asked a number of experts to weigh in on the following question: "What was the worst business decision ever made?" Listen to what some of the experts said:

• "In the mid-1970s, a young engineer named Steve Sasson invented the world's first digital camera. He secured a patent for it on behalf of his employer, then pitched his bosses on a new business model based on the invention. They passed. Today, digital cameras are ubiquitous—and Sasson's company, Kodak, is emerging from bankruptcy." (Daniel Pink).
• "In 1983, Coca-Cola launched New Coke, a weapon in its losing market-share battle with Pepsi. But consumers boycotted, and just three months later, Coke brought back Coca-Cola Classic. By 1986, Coke was back on top, and some alleged it was all a marketing scheme!" (Melissa Lee)
• "McDonald's decision to sell Chipotle in 2006. What were they thinking? We know what they weren't thinking: that Americans are losing faith in the food chain that McDonald's exploits and instead want healthy fare." (Jim Cramer).
• "Apple's firing of Steve Jobs in 1985 set the company back for a dozen years and drove it to near-bankruptcy. Apple only saved itself by rehiring him in 1997, at which point he went on to make Apple the most financially valuable—and influential—tech company in the world." (Walt Mossberg).

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Folly; Foolishness; Fools; Wisdom—At times we display just as much foolishness in our spiritual lives. That's why we need to pray for God's wisdom. (2) Failure; Mistakes—Even excellent companies and smart people make big mistakes. We will too. (3) Receiving Christ—These decisions pale in comparison to the worst decision anyone can make—rejecting Christ.

In her book, Unthinkable, reporter Amanda Ripley investigated why some people survive disasters and others don't. After examining fires, floods, hurricanes, and airplane crashes, interviewing dozens of survivors, she found three phases on the journey from danger to safety: denial, deliberation and what she calls "the decisive moment." Unfortunately, many people don't make it to that final phase—the decisive moment. They don't make a decision to act.

But as an example of the third stage, Ripley tells the story of Paul Heck, a man who knew how to act when his decisive moment came. On March 27, 1977 the 65-year-old Mr. Heck and his wife were sitting on a Pan Am 747 awaiting takeoff when an incoming plane hurtled through the fog at 160 miles per hour and slammed into the Heck's plane. The collision sheared the top off of 747 and set the plane on fire. Most of the 396 passengers onboard froze. Even Heck's wife, Floy, would later report that her mind "went blank" and she felt like "a zombie." But Paul Heck went into action mode. He unbuckled his seatbelt, grabbed his wife's hand said "Follow me," and then led her through a hole on the left side of the aircraft.

In an interview after the disaster, Mr. Heck noted how most people just sat in their seats acting like everything was fine even after colliding with another plane and seeing the cabin fill with smoke. But Heck also noted that before takeoff he had studied the 747's safety diagram. When the crisis came Heck knew it was a decisive moment. He was prepared to make a decision and head for the only exit that was available to him.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Conversion; Accepting Christ—The "decisive moment" about accepting Christ, making a decision for Christ. (2) Leadership; Courage—Every leader, every church, every Christian, faces "decisive moments" when he or she must act with courage and make a decision.

During a tourist bus excursion to a volcanic canyon in Iceland, a woman was reported missing when she failed to return to the bus. The bus driver waited an hour before notifying the Icelandic police. Soon after the missing person's report, search and rescue teams and even a helicopter arrived to search for the missing woman. About 50 people also participated in the search on vehicles and by foot.

But the search was called off within about 12 hours when it authorities discovered that the missing woman wasn't really missing. She was actually on the bus and she had even been a part of the search party. Apparently before reentering the bus after the stop to tour the canyon, she changed her clothes and "freshened up." The other passengers didn't recognize her. Chief of police Sveinn K. Runarsson told reporters that the woman was innocent of the mistake. She recognized the description of herself and "had no idea that she was missing."

Possible Preaching Angles: People may be religious or even in the church (part of the tour bus), they may be doing good things (like joining the search party) without realizing that they are the ones who need to be found, or that they are the ones who need to repent and believe (like Nicodemus, for example). In other words, maybe you are the lost sheep, the prodigal son, and so on.

It was 1917, on a piercing winter night in Greenwich Village. Huddled in the back room of a bar, known as the Hell Hole, was a Bohemian gathering of artists, intellectuals, and misfits. Among them were the country's premiere playwright, Eugene O'Neill, and the left-wing journalist Dorothy Day, his close friend, confidante, and drinking buddy. Maybe it was the booze, maybe because the hour was way past closing time, but O'Neill seemed unusually melancholy.

He started quoting from memory the Francis Thompson poem "The Hound of Heaven," which describes our common flight from the God who lovingly pursues us:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years …
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him …

Dorothy Day had never heard O'Neill speak of this poem before, and it sobered her, sobered everyone. Cigarette smoke curled upward and hung in the air like wispy apparitions …. Everyone was hushed and still.

Shortly after leaving the Hell Hole, Day and O'Neill parted company, not to see each other again for a decade. He wrote of a God who failed to make good on his promises, of sin and shame and the terror of death. He won four Pulitzers and the Nobel Prize in Literature, but happiness eluded him.

She married twice, conceived twice, aborted twice, and finally bore a daughter by a man she never married. In December 1927, she surrendered to the relentless pursuit of heaven's Hound and entered the Catholic Church. She lived a life of poverty, with no income and no security, caring for the homeless on the streets not far from the Hell Hole. She wrote of a merciful God.

Dorothy Day never stopped praying for her friend, who had opened her eyes with the words he spoke. "It is one of those poems," she wrote in her autobiography, "that awakens the soul, recalls to it the fact that God is its destiny."

We don't know if Eugene O'Neill's soul was ever so awakened. We do know that while he lay on his deathbed in Boston in 1953, Dorothy Day was with him. She summoned a priest to his side. Keeping vigil, she prayed. She prayed he would at last unclench his fist and grasp the hand that had been reaching out to him for so many years, hoping to hear the words he recited in a barroom on that blustery winter night: "Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"

Two years ago, Chris Simpson led a white pride march. Six months ago, he abandoned the white supremacist movement. This past April, he was baptized.

Simpson, a 38-year-old garbage man and former Marine with "PURE HATE" tattooed across his knuckles, was consumed with hate.

"Hate will blind you to so many things," says Simpson. "It will stop you from having so many things. It consumes you."

After the loss of his first child, Simpson had a lot of hatred and anger built up inside. The white pride movement gave Simpson a place to direct his anger and frustration—at people of other races.

Things began to change, however, during a family trip to Walmart. One of his children looked down an aisle, then up at Simpson and said, "Daddy, you can't go down that aisle. There's a n_____ down there."

"It was time to make a change for them, "Simpson said of his children. "I don't want them following that path."

After he and his family watched the movie Courageous, Simpson began attending church. One month later he was baptized as a follower of Jesus Christ.

"Any kind of burdens I carried before, I let them go." Simpson added, "There's no need to carry things that happen in the past. I forgave all those who wronged me and asked forgiveness from those that I have wronged."

Simpson has left hate behind. He's even going through the Freedom Ink Tattoo removal program—starting with the word HATE.

God does not move us beyond the gospel; he moves us more deeply into the gospel, because all of the power we need in order to change and mature comes through the gospel …. The gospel does not simply ignite the Christian life; it is the fuel that keeps Christians going and growing every day. Real change cannot come apart from the gospel.

On April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg and was swallowed up in the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Over 1,500 people perished as "the ship that not even God could sink" sank. Only about a third of the passengers lived to tell of the nightmare.

Although the death toll was staggering, the greater tragedy was that many more people could have been rescued. The Titanic was certified to offer lifeboat space to 1,178 people. But of the twenty lifeboats lowered overboard, only a few were filled to capacity. Several were less than half full. For instance, the first lifeboat lowered, boat seven, had room for 65 people, yet just 28 boarded. Boat five left with 24 spaces unfilled. Lifeboat nine left with 26 out of 65 paces unfilled. Lifeboat one could accommodate 40 people but left the Titanic with only 12 people on board. In all, only 711 passengers and crew were rescued, while 40 percent of the total lifeboat spaces remained unfilled. Meanwhile, hundreds of people floated in the open water wearing life jackets near the twenty unfilled lifeboats. Only one of the vessels went back in search of other survivors. The rest (with room to spare) remained at a safe distance observing the horrific scene, comforting one another, and praising God they'd been spared.

In the ensuing months, as investigators sought to determine why so many lifeboat seats remained unfilled, they uncovered some startling misperceptions. First, some of the Titanic crewman mistakenly assumed that filling the lifeboats to their "sea capacity" would cause the boats to break in two during the lowering process. As a result of their excessive caution, many passengers were forced to plummet into the icy waters. Secondly, some of the passengers were reluctant to board the lifeboats because they didn't feel that there was an urgent need. After all, the ship was supposedly "unsinkable."

Possible preaching bridges: (1) As the church of Jesus Christ, does our outreach "make room" for lost people, so we can invite them to Christ? Or does our lack of compassion or misperceptions prevent us from rescuing those around us? (2) Salvation is abundantly available, but we have to see our need and get into the lifesaving boat. (3) It's also possible that many of the men acted in valor by allowing the women and children to get on the lifeboats first. In their sacrificial heroism, they wanted to ensure that others were safe before they boarded the lifeboats.

See the following sources: Walter Lord & Nathaniel Philbrick, A Night to Remember (Holt Paperbacks, 2004), p. 177; John P. Eaton & Charles A. Haas, Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy (W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), p. 32; Life Titanic (Life, 2012), p. 102; Senan Molony, Titanic: A Primary Source History (Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2005), p. 24

Jesus is the great polarizer. It's as if all of humanity were iron filings laid out on a sheet of paper, and Jesus is the magnet. Every single filing lines up either with the North Pole or the South Pole. Every person is either attracted to or repelled by the person of Jesus Christ, because he's a magnet. The power and influence of his very being cannot be ignored.