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Location:
6425 Jefferson Rd. For
directions, click here.
Jerry
Varnado,
pastor June 2,
2002 Today
we're kicking off a financial
campaign for our new building.
Rick Bonfim and the team that's
been working on this have come up
with a "mathematical" formula
that does a great job of
capturing our understanding about
how this new building can become
a reality: Actually,
this isn't a math formula. It's a
faith formula --
and I trust it is faith that's
well placed. My
friend Charles Sineath, pastor of
Wesleyan Fellowship in Marietta,
has a phrase you've probably have
heard me repeat on occasion:
"God's work, done God's way, in
God's time, will not lack God's
provision." And
that's what I want to talk with
you about today. I'm putting my
sermon series on "spiritual gifts
in corporate worship" on hold for
one week, so that we can spend
some time thinking together about
where we are along the journey to
a new building, and about what
God has done for us thus
far. I'm
going to use as my texts today
the two Scriptures from our faith
formula. First, Psalm
127:1-2: It
is vain for you to rise up
early, to retire late, to eat
the bread of painful labors;
for He gives to His beloved
even in his sleep.
(NASB) Are
we building this
house or is God?
The answer to that question is
critical. Today
I want to demonstrate to you why
we can be confident that it is
God who is
building, not us. To do this, I'm
going to remind you about this
history of this building project
-- or if you haven't been with us
through all of this, you'll hear
about it for the first
time. I
believe that as we look back over
our shoulder we can recognize
God's clear activity in this
project -- in at least four
ways: When
I came here as pastor in the
mid-1980s, I immediately noticed
that our forebears in this church
had made more provision for the
dead than the living. Most of the
property was cemetery -- there
was simply no room for
expansion. Even
so, I mistakenly came to the
conclusion that God wanted this
church to remain here. So when we
were pressured for space, we
tried to negotiate with the
neighboring owner about
additional property. We tried for
more than a year before giving up
with a great deal of
frustration. Through
the failure of those
negotiations, God demonstrated to
me that I was wrong in my
understanding about remaining in
this location. So we started
looking elsewhere. Many
in the church thought we should
relocate to the high-growth area
near Georgia Highway 316. So we
looked for land there. In fact, I
had three real estate agents
looking. But that effort also
ended in frustration, because, as
we discovered, all the available
property was far out of our price
range. Then
one day my wife, Beverly, and I
we were coming home from a visit
to Toccoa and she noticed a "For
Sale" sign on property on U.S.
Highway 129, just inside Clarke
County. The owner was a former
law partner of mine -- the
property was in his family -- so
I called. He wasn't home, but I
spoke with his wife, only to
discover the sign wasn't for
property along the highway at
all, but for a tract way off the
road behind Westgate Park
Subdivision. Another dead end, or
so it seemed. But
as I was about to hang up, she
said, "The family is meeting
about the property soon. I'll
tell them you called." She did,
and they called back. They said
the property along the highway
wasn't really for sale -- but
they were willing to talk to us
about it. In fact, they even said
they thought it would be good
location for a church.
Eventually, that's the piece of
land we bought. Despite
all my errors, despite my
difficulty in following God's
leading, He persevered in
directing us -- and led us to a
better tract of land. A
few years after I came this
church, we felt the leading of
God to sell the parsonage.
Because of it's design and for
other reasons, it really wasn't
suitable. We
managed to get the North Georgia
Conference to approve the sale
and we put $30,000 of the
proceeds in the bank to be used
for a possible land
purchase. Some
time after that, at a wedding
reception, I casually mentioned
to a friend who was the managing
trustee of a charitable
foundation in Atlanta that we
were trying to buy additional
property. He
called me some months later to
ask whether we were going to buy
the property or not. He had set
aside $10,000 for us and needed
to do something with it. I said
yes we are actively looking so he
sent the money. Now we had
$40,000 in cash. We
met as a church and determined
that $100,000 for ten acres was
the most we should pay. And here
are the terms we arrived at in
advance: We would be willing to
pay $30,000 down, with the
balance paid over five years with
no interest. In a stretch, we
would pay $40,000 down -- but we
preferred to hold the other
$10,000 in reserve, just in case
we had problems making the
payments. For
those of you who haven't had much
experience in real estate
transactions, deals like that are
few and far between. "Unheard of"
may be more accurate. Lynn
Norton was the Chairman of the
Trustees at the time and the
church board empowered the two of
us to negotiate with the property
owner. The family that owned the
land had decided that, yes, they
would sell it to us, but they
wanted $13,000 per acre, which
they considered to be a
concession to its true value. And
it was. Well,
we told Ray Nicholson, the man we
were negotiating with, our limit
of ten acres at $10,000 per acre.
We dickered for about an hour but
he wouldn't budge off his price.
Then he left the room to take a
call in another part of his
office. Frustrated
over the failure of the
negotiations, Lynn and I starting
getting our things together. We
figured the meeting was over.
When Mr. Nicholson returned to
the room, he sat down, looked at
us, and said this: "OK. I will
sell you ten acres for $100,000.
If you'll pay $40,000 down,
rather than $30,000, I'll finance
the balance for five years no
interest. And you can have an
option to buy an additional five
acres for $13,000 per
acre." I
almost fell out of my chair.
Those were the exact terms we
wanted. Well,
we closed the deal, paid the
$40,000 -- and we managed to come
up with the $12,000 annual
payments for the next 4
years. Now,
when we bought the property, we
knew that the Department of
Transportation had filed plans to
widen the road. They were going
to take 70 feet of our depth. We
knew that and thought we could
live with it. But
four years later they filed a
revised plan that called for
taking 140 feet of
depth -- nearly four acres of
land. That meant we we had to
have the other five acres that we
had an option on. Otherwise we
wouldn't have enough land to
build on. Time was of the essence
-- the other five acres had been
put on the market -- so we took
out a short-term loan of $65,000
and closed the
purchase. Let
me show you a slide that
illustrates our total land cost
during all this
process: Last
month, the Department of
Transportation (DOT) offered us
$27,000 for the 4.72 acres they
need to widen the highway. Adding
in some money for damages, they
offered us a total of
$145,000. Now,
friends, we were not smart enough
to figure this out on our own. We
could not have planned this. Can
anyone see God in this process?
Does this story help you to know
that God is involved in building
the house? Well,
let's look briefly at the second
part of the formula -- Nehemiah
2:18. Nehemiah is telling his
fellow Jews about the miraculous
things God has done to make
provision for the rebuilding of
the wall of Jerusalem. And
here's the response of people in
that same verse: I
don't have time to go through the
detail of the story of Nehemiah,
but the bottom line is that God
already had provided everything
they needed for the job. But the
people of God still had to rise
up and do the work. It's
that age-old issue again: What
does God do for us -- and what
must we do ourselves? The record
of the Scriptures and of history
is that the work of the Kingdom
is almost always a
cooperative effort
between God's activity and human
activity in response to
God. Generally
speaking, God won't do what we
can do ourselves. He gives us a
role to play. The people had to
rise up and build. The LORD had
made provision, but He wasn't
going to speak the wall of
Jerusalem into existence. The
people had to labor. Now,
in a number of ways -- as I've
just related to you -- God has
moved His hand on our behalf,
doing what we couldn't do, even
doing things that would have been
impossible under normal
conditions. At
first, a new building for Gateway
Church was only a distant
possibility, not much more than a
dream. It seemed so far away. I'm
sure many considered it
impossible. But
God has orchestrated
circumstances, and has now put
this building within our reach.
We are going to do
this! It
is no longer a dream. It is a
present reality. It's no longer
impossible, but doable. We could
well begin construction by the
end of this year. God has done
and is doing His part. Now, we
must rise up and build. We must
set our hands to this good work,
through our prayers, through our
gifts, through our overall
support of this
project. Now,
even if you don't care about this
new building -- maybe you're a
visitor and this doesn't mean
anything to you -- there is still
an important message in what I've
said to you this
morning. Central
to all our conversation about God
is a two-facet question that I
keep putting before you: "Is
God's power available to us? And,
if so, can it change human life
and human
institutions?" In
other words can God touch my
situation; can God touch me? Can
God change my spouse and me so
our marriage will work? Can God
heal the brokenness in my life;
the painful memories of my
childhood? Can God heal the
disease that is trying to destroy
my body? Can God deliver me from
the financial mess I've created?
Can God forgive the many and
horrible sins I've committed?
My
friend, the answer is YES!!! The
God who has exerted Himself on
our behalf to make provision for
this building is the same God who
can touch your
situation. Look
at the words of Jesus in Matthew
11:28-30: A
yoke is a thing you put on a
couple of oxen so they can pull a
cart or a plow or something else
that weighs a lot. The reason
that Jesus' yoke is easy is
because when you're hooked up
with Jesus, He is bearing most of
the weight! He
wants to do this for you -- just
like He's been doing this for
Gateway Church. He is the God who
gives to His beloved even in
their sleep. Even while they're
sleeping, God is moving to answer
their prayers and meet their
needs. Come
to Him, and you will find rest
for your soul.
Gateway
Church gathers
for worship
Sundays
at 10:30 a.m.
(Hwy. 129) in Athens,
Georgia.
Ministry
of the
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Gateway
Today
For the Gateway family
Pastor
Jerry's Weekly
E-Mail
A
GATEWAY SERMON
Let
us rise up and build
Gateway
Church,
Athens GA
Equals what? Equals
this:
--
our planned building.Unless
the LORD builds the house,
they labor in vain who build
it. Unless the LORD guards the
city, the watchman keeps awake
in vain.
Recognizing
God's activity
Let
me go over these one at a
time.
God
chose the land to
purchase
God
arranged the resources
needed
God
negotiated the
purchase
God
maximized our
resources
We
paid $100,000 for the first 10
acres. We paid $65,000 for an
additional 5 acres. Plus we will
pay about $10,000 in interest
before its over. That means we
have a total in the property of
$175,000.
What
this means is that we will end up
with a little over 10 acres of
useable land on a four-lane U.S.
highway in Athens, Georgia --
valued at $278,000 -- for a net
cost to us of $30,000! And that's
the DOT's opening offer; we may
receive more!
Accepting
our responsibilityAnd
I told them of the hand of my
God which had been good upon
me, and also of the king's
words that he had spoken to
me.
So
they said, "Let us rise up and
build." Then they set their
hands to this good work.
(NKJV)
The larger
message"Come
to Me, all who are weary and
heavy-laden, and I will give
you rest. Take My yoke upon
you and learn from Me, for I
am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for
your souls. For My yoke is
easy and My burden is light."
(NASB)
An
audio tape of this sermon is
available
free of charge (U.S. requests
only).
Request
a tape by calling
or writing the Gateway Church
office.
Please specify tape number
020602a: Let Us Rise Up and
Build.
©
2002 Gerald R.
Varnado