This Old House

After stumbling across an old notebook/journal of mine yesterday, I started reading more of what I had captured in its pages back in 2016. The same day as yesterday’s notes, I had attended the evening service as well there at Cherry Run Camp Meeting. The evangelist, one of our own Western Pennsylvania United Methodists, Rev. Ellen Bullock, shared the scripture passage from Acts 27:21-26 where Paul and Luke and everybody on their ship are caught in a horrible winter storm and are about to be shipwrecked. And God sends an angel to deliver a message to Paul… and through him to the entire crew and passengers on this doomed ship.

Acts 27:21-26

²¹ After they had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said: “Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete; then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss. ²² But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost; only the ship will be destroyed. ²³ Last night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve stood beside me ²⁴ and said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar; and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you.’ ²⁵ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. ²⁶ Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island.”

Now, again, my notes are what I was hearing the Lord speak to me in the midst of her sermon… so I’m not so much giving you her sermon notes as I am giving you my thoughts and observations and even questions as I sat and listened and made my notes.

One of the first things I noticed was verse 23 where Paul says the angel came from “the God to whom I belong and whom I serve.” So what’s the one requirement for angelic help? That you (or I) belong to their Master!

At one point Ellen must have drawn a contemporary example because in my notes I wrote: “If Jesus were in America now, one of his parables he might use as he taught might be ‘This Old House’.”

And there were several observations of how owning an old house compares to spiritual reality for our lives as Jesus taught.

• The owner has a responsibility for his property. Do you live in a rental? Call the landlord for fixing things. Live in a parsonage? Call the Trustees. Own your own home? You get to take care of the issues on your own. If we “belong to” Christ, then it’s never just up to us… We call out to Him for help in fixing whatever needs attention!
• The owner has a right to make changes. You can tell when a house is up for sale or even has just been sold. There are modifications and reconstruction projects. And outside, you see LOTS of garbage… There are things that used to be part of the house that have been thrown away. If we now “belong to” Christ, then there will be changes in “this old house” as he remakes us and brings us into line with what HE wants. And there will be things that are discarded in order to make us into the person (or house?) he wants us to be.
• You give up the right to stay the same when you get a new owner. If we truly do “belong to” Christ now, then our right to keep everything the way it was before we came to Christ is gone. Jesus, our new owner, can rearrange and reconstruct anything in our lives he wants.
• With Jesus as owner, there can be no Time Share. In practical terminology, you can’t live like a Christian on Sunday and consider Monday through Saturday are yours to do whatever you desire. If Jesus is owner of “this old house,” then it is his every day of the week, all 24 hours of each and every day.
• When we “sell out” to Jesus, we surrender the right to keep a room in our hearts as ‘OFF LIMITS – ONLY I CAN ENTER!’ When we “sell out” to Christ, everything becomes HIS! We don’t get to keep back any secret rooms or hidden closets.
• If our lives, and our hearts, are viewed in this parable as “this old house,” then it’s important to remember that we are ALL ‘fixer-uppers.’

I’m not one who knows a lot on how to fix up a fixer-upper, but, in light of this parable approach, I don’t need to know how to fix everything on my own. Rather, I need to keep the “owner” (Jesus) informed and talk about everything with him. He is the one who brings about whatever changes he wants.