Empowered by the Spirit: Serving Through Christ's Love

Good morning. It is truly a joy to be with you this morning. I wish my wife could be here, but since she's not, can I take your picture? By the way, get your phone out if you would, please. There. I can share that with my wife when I get home today. I wish I'd been able to do it when all the young people were sitting up here in the front, but hey, you look not so bad, too. Now the reason I asked you to take your phone out was this is a good time for you to think of a good friend in the neighborhood, text them, say, hey, I'm in church and enjoying it. Come with me next Sunday. So go ahead and do that. If you're on your phone, I won't criticize. I just gave you an assignment. [45:39] Anyway, it is good to be here, and let me say thank you to your pastor. What a joy and a blessing he's been to me over many years in a variety of different ways, and I'm so thankful, and to meet your other pastors as well, wonderful staff. But you know, the church is that cooperative relationship of pastors and laity, and across our district, and I'm sure in this church as well. There's wonderful, wonderful laypeople. There's people who accomplish ministry all week long in so many different ways. You know, we as ministers get to come up on the platform, and you see part of what we do, but we don't often get to see what you do in the course of a week. That's okay. God knows. And sometimes when you're the hands and the feet of Jesus, and maybe a little bit of you said, boy, I wish somebody else knew what I was doing here. I wish somebody else knew the patience I have to bring to this situation. I wish somebody else knew the light and the salt that I'm trying to be in my neighborhood [46:46] and community and place of work. We have an audience of one who knows exactly what we do for him, and that's what matters. It's a privilege today to be able to share primarily in two ways. As your pastor already mentioned, I lead a ministry in the city of Philadelphia. That's your ministry. You don't get to come to Front Step very often, but because of your participation in this church and because of your giving and because of your support, I'm able to do and we are able to do what we're doing in the inner city, and we couldn't do it without you. And so thank you very much for that. And then the other privilege that I have today is to share from God's Word, and this being Pentecost Sunday. Pentecost is my favorite Sunday of the year because that was the birth of the church. Today's the anniversary of the church of Jesus Christ in a very special way, but it's an ongoing rebirth that we seek every day, every year as we pray, come Holy Spirit, fill us, fill us to overflowing. [48:04] Praise God that all of us as Christians have a measure of the Holy Spirit when we're saved. But every day we need to be filled to overflowing, and we pray both individually and as churches. Oh, God, may your Holy Spirit come with such power that our communities are changed, that our neighborhoods are changed, that our schools are changed, that our politicians are changed. Can I get an amen on that last one? Holy Spirit, we need you. By the way, I preach in the inner city. Amen. I don't know if you've been to any of the inner cities, especially the black churches, but they are great at saying amen, hallelujah, preach it, brother, all that kind of stuff. And when they do, I know that they're understanding what I'm saying. So if it's too quiet, I have to repeat what I said because I'm not sure you understood what I said. So when we get to the sermon, it doesn't hurt to throw in an amen and a hallelujah now and then. [49:12] Amen. Thank you. We serve because Jesus serves. Our goal in our prayer is to be Christ-like as Christians. And Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And in the tradition of our particular denomination, like so many denominations, like so many independent churches, it means about caring for the poor. Phineas Brzee said, And this is in the founding documents of the Church of the Nazarene,

that's the perspective we take. There's an organization. There's a church in our building, very small church that gives out 15 tons of food every week so they got the food part covered so we're focused on long-term relationship with children youth and families to disciple them into believing jesus christ knowing jesus christ and serving jesus christ this young lady along with her siblings was taken away from her family when she was one year of age she was put into the foster care system in the foster care system she was moved from church from from house to house as problems would develop at one house she told me when she's about i think three or four years of age there was nothing in the house to eat and so she would drink hot sauce and that has scarred her [01:18:02] esophagus and caused problems since then you but during those early years she was praying consistently a three-word prayer god use me god use me a sad part about it was when she was four or five years of age she said i will never ever be a christian the home that she came from a biological birth was muslim and by four or five years of age she said i will never be a christian because the same people who abused me during the week are sitting next to me in church on sunday but praise god at seven years of age she was adopted into a by a lady who truly know what it meant to be a servant of jesus christ and there rachel learned about who christ truly was and her heart began to soften and over the next to jesus she started with us when she was 15 years of age and she was a christian and she was a christian and she was a christian and she was a christian and she has been part of our ministry for nine years in fact she did so well she became my program director ran all the programs for us she graduated from temple university she's now applying for a doctoral program in clinical psychology so that she can work with little kids who are suffering trauma from the system and from various circumstances praise god that's what we're about [01:19:37] that's what pentecost is about that's what christians are about is bringing the light the love of jesus christ to everyone we meet that makes an eternal difference thank you for this opportunity today thank you for the joy of being here may god bless you richly may i just pray a prayer of benediction or words lord bless this congregation may your holy spirit be with you be here in new vitality and with such power that every person in this region is aware that god is shaking the ground holy ground with his power may these be witnesses with power and may we continue to hear great and wonderful things in this church and this town in the name of jesus amen amen

Thank you. This white outline shows the city of Philadelphia boundaries. And the red and yellow dot show how many people were shot last year. Now I'm a little bit ambivalent about showing this one, because I want you to come. But right in the middle of that is Front Step, and there's the people that have been shot within two blocks of us, three blocks of us in the nine years that I have been there. But come anyway. Anyway, grace, you can say it's a pretty safe place, right? And we have had the blessing of God upon us. We're aware of the crime. [55:18] We're aware of the violence. Most of those dots, of course, they're all lives. They're all people God cares about. But most of them are individual situations of somebody angry with somebody else. And I praise God in the nine years that I've been there walking the streets. I pray walk through the neighborhood. I'm out in the neighborhood. I'm kind of seen as a chaplain to the neighborhood. And as I go out in the neighborhood and walk up and down the streets, there's all these people calling out to me, Hey, Pastor Wes, hey, Pastor. Half of them I don't know. I don't know how they got to know who I am. But after nine years of being in the community, it's a privilege and a joy to be known as, [55:58] as Pastor Wes, chaplain to the community. And right now I'm in a four-month prayer and preparation time. I don't know why the Lord assigned this. But starting with April 15th, you all remember April 15th. That's an important day in your life, right? April 15th, May, June, July, August. The Lord has asked me to back off and to devote. To devote the first four hours of every day to Him. You know, we can get so busy doing what we're doing. And our to-do lists can be so long that the Lord sometimes says, I'm going to put you on a shelf. And so last year He put me on a shelf for four months because [56:53] I was up on the roof of our building doing some things I normally need to do. You know, checking the drains and the HVAC units and other things. And as I was coming down a ladder, the ladder broke. It had nothing to do with my weight, folks. The ladder broke. It was a wooden ladder. I shouldn't have been using it. And I tumbled down and broke my foot and ruptured my Achilles. And so for four months I couldn't drive and I couldn't walk very well. the Lord showed me a lot of new things. But then a few weeks ago I found out I have a form of cancer that's not bad. Not too bad. [57:38] The prognosis is really good. In fact, right now I'm taking radiation. It started two weeks ago and I go five days a week for the next three or four weeks. And in the world's view, suffering has no meaning. But in God's economy, all things work together for good. To those who love God, and are called according to His purpose. And so right now the Lord's kind of put me on a shelf. And He said, this is a time of prayer and preparation. And I want to do new things in the city. I want to do new things in your community. [58:28]

I want to do new things in you and through you. And Wesley, what do I have to do to get your attention? Well, the Lord's got my attention. And so, I don't know what He's going to accomplish in these coming weeks and months. And I don't know. But here's what I'm praying for. This relates to Pentecost Sunday. I'm praying for an outpouring of God's Spirit on our community. I'm praying for a spiritual awakening that accomplishes by God's power what human beings can't accomplish in a hundred years. I'm looking back in the history of the Christian church, and I'm seeing time after time after time [59:20] when God moved with power. The first great awakening in America, the second great awakening in America, the Azusa revival, the Fulton Street revival, what takes place at Asbury. I don't understand it all and I can't explain it all. But on Pentecost Sunday, I can say when God moves with power, great things happen. And I look into the faces of the kids that I serve and the children that I serve and the families that I serve. And they are so filled with, the children are so filled with excitement [01:00:01] at seven years of age, eight years of age, nine years of age. And by 11 years of age, their eyes are hollow with hopelessness. Because they've come to realize the society and the circumstances that they're living in. And they say, I'll never get out of this. But we are there to say, with Jesus, you'll get out of this. By God's presence and power, he has a plan for your life that transcends and goes beyond anything you can think of. [01:00:36] And he will open up doors and opportunities that only he can open up. I got a little off topic there. Violence in the city of Philadelphia. The fellow at the bottom, there, Donnie Andrews, good friend of mine, prayer walks our community and prays for it. Our community is in the bottom 5% of the United States, economically. Average household income is around $21,000 a year. In the state of Pennsylvania, there are approximately 1,600 elementary schools. Any elementary school teachers here today? God bless you. [01:01:37] God bless you. My wife has been an elementary school teacher for 32 years, and that's a big ministry. In the state of Pennsylvania, there's in 2021, 1,607 elementary schools. Each year, it changes a little bit, but the one that is closest to our ministry is pretty consistently ranked the very bottom.

It had been my long-cherished desire to have a place in the heart of the city which could be made a center of holy fire and where the gospel could be preached to the poor. Where I work in the city of Philadelphia, we're preaching the gospel to the poor in a variety of ways. We are a Christ-centered community center, sharing the message and the love of Jesus. [50:12] I know we've got some people here this morning that have been to Front Step. If you've been to Front Step in Philadelphia, go ahead and put up your hand. All right. Great to see you. And thank you. So come again. Where you been? We want you to come back, and we love having you. So we are very much like your church, except we do things a little differently. We don't have services on Sunday. We don't take up offerings from the people that we serve. But we have ministry that takes place from Monday through Saturday. In fact, part of the reason we're not called a church, we're called the Nazarene Compassionate Ministry Center. In the neighborhood which I work, 40% of the kids call themselves Muslim, and they would [51:00] never go to a church, but they come to Front Step because we're not a church, but we're sharing Jesus Christ, and they know it. And when they come and register, we have to send a form. We send a form home that says, it's okay to take their pictures, it's okay to share about Jesus, and the parents sign it and send the kids back. But if they thought we were a church, they wouldn't be coming. So we're able to do, in a creative way, exactly what you're doing in so many wonderful ways. In fact, the work and witness project that you have next July, I'm going to learn more about it, because that sounds like something we could use in the inner city. It would be a wonderful way to tie together the various churches. We've got eight churches within two blocks of our ministry, and yet we're the only ministry that's focused on children and youth. But I would just love to reach out to those eight other churches and beyond and say, hey, let's all band together and do some good things for the people of the community, and let the [52:08] light of Jesus shine that way as well. Praise God for what you're doing. That is a fabulous ministry. So we're sharing the love and the message of Jesus Christ in a variety of ways. The city of Philadelphia, you all know about that. That's not the part of the city we're in. There's the Liberty Bell. There's Independence Hall, and even if you don't know about those two, you know about this next one. You know, we have work and witness teams come from across the East. They're in the western United States, and on Fridays they go out and they do whatever they want. They help us primarily on Monday through Thursdays, and when we're planning, I say, what do you want to do? You want to see the Liberty Bell? [53:03] You want to see Constitutional? Oh, yeah, that's good. Oh, yeah. You want to see Rocky? Yeah, we want to see Rocky, and we want to run up and down the steps. Yeah, and he didn't even exist. So Philadelphia has its problems. Open-air drug mark in the Kensington part of the city, and the drugs. Some people call it Zombieville. I haven't brought myself to the place of calling it Zombieville, because those are human beings created in the image of Jesus Christ. They need to be treated with love and respect, no matter how much sin has devastated their life. We have problems with crime. In the nine years that I've been working there, it fluctuates, it goes up and down. [54:01] It was a tough, tough time during all the businesses around us, right after March of 2012 were ransacked. After the killing of George Floyd, there was a lot of violence right within the neighborhood. It changed the dynamics quite a bit. Fortunately the numbers are coming down, but oh, God, please bring them down some more.

People on the district donate to us, donate us uniforms, and we pass them along. The first week of every December, we give out six tons of warm winter clothing to get people ready for. [01:13:47] And so we set it all up on Friday and Saturday. And then by the following Friday, it's all gone. And what a blessing that is. Christmas presents. A couple of the churches on the district have donated. Christmas presents to us. And we don't give Christmas presents to kids. We think parents should give Christmas presents to kids. And some of the parents that we know can't afford to give Christmas presents to kids. And so we get the presents out. And then we surreptitiously invite the parents to come in. And we've got wrapping paper and they can wrap them up and they can store them at our place till Christmas. And on Christmas morning, the families and the children, our children are blessed by the churches and by those that give from across our district. [01:14:37] So the families can have wonderful Christmases. This is maybe my favorite picture. Everything we do at Front Step has a Christ focus. Every day after school, somehow we incorporate Jesus into all that we do. That's what distinguishes us in the city of Philadelphia from all the other after school programs, from all the other social agencies. We lift up Jesus Christ at every opportunity. And when we have opportunities like this, that is actually Pastor Owen White from Westchester. And when his church was with us one week last summer, he gave an altar invitation. Who wants to know Jesus as Savior? [01:15:26] Who wants to recommit to Jesus Christ as Lord? And 17 of our kids came forward to pray. Amen. Pastor, you've got some clipboards there. If you would like to learn more about Front Step, we have a newsletter that goes out by email about three times a year. We are not going to fill your box with garbage. We are not going to sell your email, but you're going to get just an occasional email to tell us, tell you more about what's happening. If you want to receive that, you'll actually get one this coming week, because we just, we just sent one out this past week. [01:16:12] But if

Key Takeaways

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Observation Questions

1. What significant event does Pentecost Sunday commemorate? ([48:04])
2. How does the speaker describe the role of laypeople in the church? ([46:46])
3. What is the primary focus of the ministry at Front Step in Philadelphia? ([50:12])
4. What personal challenges has the speaker faced, and how has he interpreted these experiences in light of his faith? ([57:38])

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it important for Christians to be filled with the Holy Spirit daily, according to the sermon? ([48:04])
2. How does the speaker's story about the young girl who drank hot sauce illustrate the impact of long-term ministry? ([01:18:02])
3. What does the speaker mean when he says, "We have an audience of one who knows exactly what we do for him"? How does this perspective affect our daily actions? ([46:46])
4. How does the speaker's ministry in Philadelphia reflect the teachings of Jesus about serving others? ([49:12])

Application Questions

1. The speaker encourages us to invite friends to church. Who is one person you can invite to church this week, and how will you approach them? ([45:39])
2. Reflect on a time when you felt unnoticed in your efforts to serve others. How does knowing that God sees your actions change your perspective? ([46:46])
3. The speaker prays for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit to bring change to communities. What specific area in your community do you feel needs the Holy Spirit's intervention, and how can you pray for it? ([48:04])
4. The speaker shared about his time of prayer and preparation due to health challenges. How can you incorporate more dedicated time for prayer in your daily routine? ([56:53])
5. The ministry at Front Step focuses on long-term relationships with children and youth. How can you build meaningful, long-term relationships within your community to share the love of Christ? ([50:12])
6. The speaker mentioned the importance of serving like Jesus. What is one practical way you can serve someone in need this week, following Jesus' example? ([49:12])
7. The speaker's story about the young girl who overcame her traumatic past through the love of Christ is powerful. How can you support someone in your life who is going through a difficult time, showing them the love of Jesus? ([01:18:02])