Gtcotr/ws041509
Most of you know me as Ashley. Some of you know me as Pastor Ashley. But everyone knows me as Pastor Ron’s son. Today is a special day for me. I have never gotten the opportunity to speak here at the church. The last time I was schedule there was a hurricane. I’d like to start by telling you a little bit about the last decade of my life. I’ll try to keep it short so that it shouldn’t take more than about three hours. I was 18 when I got married, went into the Air Force and moved away from here. I had some growing up to do. I had been raised in this church for over half of my life at the time. I had no idea what an adventure God had in store for me. I didn’t always make the right choices or the best decisions. In reality, most of them were wrong and many of them very costly. I can’t say that I always lived as a Christian should. Since then I’ve come to the conclusion that through my ups and downs, right and wrong choices, good and bad days, God just wouldn’t leave me alone. There were things that He needed done and even though I still don’t know why, He seemed to want me to do them. Well, I think I could spend the next 11 years talking about the last 11 years, but that’s enough about me…for now. I’d like to tell you a story about another person who God needed to get something done.
It’s the story of a young Jewish girl named Esther.
The book of Esther starts by recording the wickedness of Haman; he was the second highest official in the kingdom of Xerxes. Xerxes was the world’s most powerful leader, who ruled from Ethiopia to India in over 127 provinces (Esther 1:1).Esther was just a young girl growing up in a foreign land. She had no idea what God had in store for her. With no parents, she was under the care of her older cousin, Mordecai. By God’s certain doing, the King banished his Queen and had young women from the entire kingdom come and try out for the new position. Esther was one of those women and for a year she was pampered and taught by her maids. In the evenings, she would walk in the courtyard while Mordecai would counsel her on how to act and what to say.
Meanwhile, Haman had a law put into place that on a certain day in the year, anyone in the kingdom could kill a Jew and take their home and possessions without punishment.The King was married to Esther who was a Jew, but this was unknown to the king and his people. Haman hated Mordecai and so decided to have him hung; he built a gallows about 75 feet high and then went off to get the King’s permission. That night the King could not sleep and the book containing their recent history was read to him. The King discovered from that book that Mordecai had foiled the king's attempted assassination (Chapter 6).In the early morning Haman went to see the King to ask permission to hang Mordecai. First the King asked him how best to honor someone. Haman thought the King was talking about him and encouraged him to do great things to honor this person. The King replied "well go and do so to Mordecai". Haman was humiliated!
Mordecai meets with Esther in chapter four and tells her of Haman’s law and encourages her to go to the king without being summoned and persuade him to reverse the law. This is a big deal as going to the king uninvited was punishable by beheading. Esther has Mordecai get the people to pray and fast for three days.In chapter seven Esther risks her life to tell the King that Haman wanted to kill her people. The King is so angry that he orders Haman to be hung on the gallows that he had made for Mordecai.Esther reveals that Mordecai is a relative and the King promotes him to Haman’s position. Mordecai reverses the old law that said the Jews should have been killed on a certain day, but instead says the Jews should protect themselves and defeat their enemies on that day
Key Scripture: Esther 4:14b "… Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
This was an extreme example of “A Divine Appointment”. God put us in places, at certain times, for different reasons and most of the time, it’s not about us. Has God ever done that to you?
How can we see Divine Appointments as such?
Last year, I was put to one of my greatest challenges yet. I was working at the church part-time and had just gotten out of our Monday morning Bible Study. We have different people who come and that day one of our College girls was there and needed a ride to Lamar. Now I’m not in the habit of giving rides to young College girls to school alone, so, sorry ladies… Anyway, the Holy Spirit pressed me to take her. I struggled with it and asked God, “Are You sure?” He was, so I went. She didn’t have to leave for 30 minutes, but I felt we had to leave right then. I thought I had an idea of how God was going to use me with all my amazing spiritual abilities and insight. I knew God wanted me to speak into her life, but as it turned out, I was wrong. Nothing! As she closed the door and walked to her dorm, I asked God why I needed to be the one to take her. I dialed my pregnant wife that I hadn’t called or told her where I was and what I was doing because of the Holy Spirit’s push to go so quickly and as I talked with TK and turned on to MLK heading back to the Church, a car going about 60 mph, slid out of control crashing into the stopped car in front of it. I knew why I was there. I hung up and ran to the scene of the accident. It was bad. I had seen “bad” many times before and this was it. As I opened the door on the driver’s side to assess the situation, I saw a woman in her 50s dazed from the air bag and heard the screams of a baby in the back. Without thought I ran to the other side opening to door to find an 11 month old dangling by his arm in the floorboard with the car seat turned upside down, the strap wrapped around his wrist. There was a lot of blood. Apparently, the woman, who was the child’s grandmother, had been drinking and in a hurried state, had not buckled him into the car seat, nor did she buckle the car seat into the car. I grabbed him, car seat and all, and ran calling out to another to get the grandmother to safety because the car had began to smoke. I have been in Radiology for over a decade now. I’ve worked all over the world. Over the years, I’ve specialized in different areas of Radiology including Pediatric Trauma. I worked at Children’s in Oakland for over two years. As I began to assess the baby as all my training and experience had taught me I quickly realized I was in wanting. I held him to my chest looking up and pleading with God to help as there was nothing I could do to save this young and fading life. With that, the baby went quiet and limp. Looking back down, thinking he had arrested from a tension pneumothorax or cardiac tamponod, I started my algorithms for resuscitation but found the baby looking at me calmly and smiling. I wiped the blood from his face and body only to find a ¼ in. cut on his right cheek. I checked his body again and the only thing I can say is that the things I saw and felt before were not there anymore, they were fixed. The paramedics arrived and I gave a statement to the police and left. I went home and changed clothes as my shirt had blood on it and my hands were covered with it. I went back to work and received a phone call from the policeman I’d given my statement to. He wanted to go over the part about the child not being in his car seat. So, I recounted the story again and asked if there was a problem with the encounter. He told me given all the details from the wreck and my story along with the others, he couldn’t understand why the baby was 100% fine and that cut on his cheek was now just a little scratch. Was I hurt? Was it my blood? No, I answered, it was a miracle. What a testimony!
If we are going to have Divine Appointments we are going to have to be:
1.Ready – prepared for immediate use. How? It was a year before Esther met the King and became Queen. She was made ready physically by her maids and mentally and spiritually by Mordecai. We have to have the Word of God in us… be ready in season and out of season as the Word says ...
Things in our lives make us ready. Some we know and some we don’t.
My mom saw a wreck a couple of weeks ago and she said it made her think of me. How can some people run to things like that while others run away? Because they are prepared and ready for that problem which brings me to my next point: Divine Appointments require us to be…
2. Willing – prompt to act or respond. How? First, being ready. Then, listening to the Holy Spirit. As Christians, we should be able to feel when God is prompting us to do something. We should know the voice of our Father. Not all of us listen, but He is always speaking. The Word says His Spirit is going all over the earth looking for those who are willing. Like David and Goliath or The widow of Zarephath in 1 Kings. This was not so for the Young Rich Ruler of Matthew 19 who was ready but wasn’t willing. He was unwilling once he heard what Jesus asked of him. Esther was ready and willing. “If I perish, I perish but I’m going to see the King” 4:16
3. Humble – reflecting, expressing, or offered in a spirit of deference or submission. How?
Trusting God – it’s rarely about you. The ready and the willing are about you, the action is about others. We should be humble in all we do, realizing without God we can do nothing. Esther knew she couldn’t do it without God so she had her people fast and pray. She also didn’t go directly to Haman, but the King, who could do something about it.
Esther 4:14b "… Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
You see, God has a plan and He will succeed. He is looking for Ready, Willing and Humble people to participate in it. With all I had learned and experienced in my medical career, I could do nothing. I needed a divine touch for this divine appointment; which leads me to my main point. If you can on get one thing out of this, get this …
God is not as concerned with your ability as your availability.
Would you stand?
Are you available? Are you ready, willing, and humble? Will you be like Esther who didn’t think she could do it, but press through and succeed? I couldn’t fix that little buddy, I had to humble myself and pray. Whether you are in line at the grocery store or at a baseball game, God may call on you to answer some mother’s prayer or just give a kind word to someone God wants to touch, or maybe save someone who turns out to be the next Billy Graham. That young princess in Egypt never knew she was saving Moses, God's chosen deliverer for the Jews. Be ready, be willing, and be humble. Let’s pray
