#81 Give Your Faith Away (15/06/03)

The Message

By Robert A. Schuller

Well did you hear there's a new survivor show coming out? This is the survivor show to beat all survivor shows. Listen to this: it says six married men and they will be dropped on an island with one car and four kids each for 6 weeks. Each kid plays two sports, and either takes music or dance classes. There is no access to fast food; each man must take care of his four kids, keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry, etc. The men only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done. There is only one t.v. between them and the remote control is lost somewhere in the sofa. The men must shave their legs and wear make up daily and they must apply it themselves, either while driving or while making four lunches. They must attend weekly PTA meetings, clean up after sick children at 3 a.m., make an Indian hut model with six toothpicks, a tortilla and one marker. They must get a four-year-old to eat a serving of peas. The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if he has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice. If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over again for the next 18 to 25 years eventually earning the right to be called mother.

Oh, I have learned a lot of faith from my mother. And mothers have that ability to give us that nurturing faith that gives us the ability to become the people that God has called us to be.

And I want us to take a look at 3 things specifically, that we need to participate in and listen to and understand if we're going to grow in our faith. The first one is to talk the talk. But you know, if all you do is talk the talk that doesn't do real good does it? We need to walk the talk. But then finally we have to talk the walk. And when we put it all together we have a way of giving our faith away. And that is probably one of the most beautiful things we can do as children of God.

When Jesus came He gave His disciples three years of His life and He taught them everything He knew. And after that He was crucified, He rose again. He continued to share more with them until He ascended into heaven. Now once He ascended into heaven the angels, apocryphal story of the angels comes to Jesus and he says, "Jesus what happens next?" And Jesus says, "Oh, they will tell others, and they will tell others, and they will tell others until the whole world knows My name." And the angel said, "But Jesus, what if they don't tell others?" And Jesus said, "I have no other plans."

We need to give our faith away. We need to talk the talk. We need to share what Jesus Christ is all about. Who He is. What He is. How He impacts our lives. We have to talk the talk.

You know talking the talk is an interesting thing because every little sub-culture in America and around the world has their own specific language. Did you know that my children even have a language in their own sub-culture, and I'm not allowed to participate in that language. If I try to imitate their talk they get really upset with me because I didn't do it just right. It's a certain sub-culture. And as we become the children of God that He has called us to be, there's language we learn. As you grow in the faith you learn this language. You learn this talk. And you learn to talk the talk.

I started golfing in the last few years, and I've learned the talk. I can talk a very good game, and that's about as far it goes. Before I started golfing I didn't know the difference between a birdie and a bogey. And people who are golfers know exactly what I'm talking about. People who aren't golfers may or may not have any idea what I'm talking about. But I could tell you this, if you have the equal number of nothing but birdies and bogies you're at par for the course. And that's actually a very, very good place to be.

Talking the talk is something that we need to learn. We need to read our Bibles. We need to listen to the Hour of Power or go to church. We need to read and understand what our faith is all about and grow in the knowledge and the wisdom and understanding of who Jesus was. How His Holy Spirit impacts our lives. How we can understand and use the words that have positive impact upon our children, our neighbors, our associates, people we come in contact with all the time. We need to learn the language of love, and to talk the talk.

But if all you ever do is talk the talk, it's pretty shallow and pretty hollow. Now I've met many people who can talk a good talk, but they don't have any walk to back it up. And there comes a point in our lives where we have to grow beyond being a spectator and become a player. Now there are certain things in life that are best, that we remain spectators.

Now I wouldn't recommend to anyone over 70 playing tackle football. Not a good idea. But there are other things in life that 70 year olds can do. I think it's a good thing for 70-year-olds to get out and walk a golf course. I think it's a good thing for us to play the game of life. Talk the talk. But then there comes the time where you take the next step and you walk the talk. You start playing the game.

My father and I have been traveling around the nation recently meeting with many of the people who keep the Hour of Power alive and on the air. We've given them special invitations and this past week we spent several days in several different cities and on Wednesday we were in Garden City New Jersey. And there in this beautiful little community we had about 300 people who came and we just had a wonderful lunch with them, and we were able to shake their hands and talk to them and meet them.

And I met one lady there who is probably one of the most incredible women I've ever met. She now has 600 children. Can you believe that? 600. Over the past 60 years she teaches Sunday school, and she keeps in touch with all of her kids and she now has a mailing list of 600 people and she'll send out 600 birthday cards a year. And she'll send out 600 Christmas cards a year. And she goes to weddings all the time. She went to 50 weddings already, she said.

Now these are her children. She cares for them, and she loves them. And this is her walk. Called by God to be a Sunday school teacher. To accumulate these children and to love them, and to care for them, and tell them about Jesus, and tell them about God's love. And let them know that they can do anything.

But it's amazing how God works. He can, in spite of our failures, He can still reach out and touch all of us in a unique and a special way.

Annie Dillard, the Pulitzer Prize winning author and poet, in her memoirs in American childhood talks about her parents. Her parents used to drop her off at church, and then they would go to the country club and they would golf or do whatever they did. So here's how she said it, "My parents didn't go to church. I practically admired them for it. They'd drop of us at the church Sunday morning and then father would drive by at noon and scoop up my sister and me saying, hop in quick so no one would see his weekend khaki pants and loafers. And so Annie Dillard grew up coming to church, understanding who Jesus was at the Sunnyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh and through it she became the spiritual leader she is today.

The Baptist preacher, Harry Emerson Fosdick said it this way: "How could I deny, or all together fail to understand Christ's love when I experienced the love that my mother gave me. If children do not have such love at home, I wonder how they could ever grow up to believe in a loving God."

It begins by talking the talk. By understanding the lingo, understanding what the Bible is The New Testament, The Old Testament. Understanding what possibility thinking is. Understanding God's love for us. Understanding the responsibility we have as a Christian. And then taking the steps to actually walk the talk. We say we're going to do something, we do it. When we say we're a Christian we go to church. When we encourage our children to love one another we express love to our spouse and to our children and to our neighbors. We walk the talk.

When we hear that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. We exemplify those things and we participate in those things, and we do those things. We walk the talk.

But then having walked the talk we have to talk the walk. We have to express and share with our children and our associates and our friends where we've come from, what we've done and why we've done what we've done. And there in build their self-esteem, their self-respect, to give them some inspiration and something to look forward to and goals to reach.

It was only a few years ago when I was talking with my wife about family dynamics and she said well, well Robert tell me about your mother's father, my grandfather. My mother's father and I said, do you know what? I don't know very much about my mother's father. For some reason we just never talk about him. I knew him as a young child. I was very young when he passed away. And I remember riding on the hay wagon, and on the tractor with him. He was a farmer. I knew that much. But I didn't know anything about his spiritual life. I didn't know anything about his life in any way, shape, or form.

And so I called my mother and I said, Mom, do you know what? You've never told me about grandpa. I don't know anything about my grandpa. Tell me about grandpa.

And she said, you know Robert, there was a time when your grandpa's life where it wasn't all pretty. I remember a time he came home from taking, going on a fishing trip with his buddies. My mother smelled alcohol on his breath. And she didn't like what she saw. And she said, if you ever come home like this again I won't be around the next day. And she pointed this finger at him. Said you'd better get your act together. And with that he got his act together. He discovered who Jesus Christ was. He discovered a new relationship with Jesus Christ. And it got to a point, she said, where there wasn't a single person who could come into their home. And he became an evangelist of the strongest order, and no one would leave our house without grandpa cornering them and saying, do you know Jesus Christ? Do know if you're going to go to heaven? Do you know you can go to heaven if you believe in Jesus Christ and here's how you can become a believer in Jesus Christ and know you're going to go to heaven when you die.

She said he became one of the strongest evangelists I've ever met. She talked to the walk to me.

Now we have to continue to talk the walk of all of the great saints, and all of the great people who continue to share with us and show us how the walk works so that we too can discover that we can walk the walk.

You know one of my hobbies is fishing. I like to fish and I like to golf. But you know, I can fish for two days and I've had enough, and I don't want anymore fishing. I can golf for two days and I don't want anymore golf. But I can preach every Sunday, and the more I preach the more I want to preach. And so I know I'm doing what God has called me to do. I'd never want to be a professional golfer. I would never in a million years want to be a professional fisherman, but it's fun to do once in a while.

And I remember years ago, I was just starting to fish marlin and discovered how to do it and we were in a, we'd signed up, myself and the team. We signed up for a marlin tournament off the coast of Catalina Island, which is just a few miles from here. And we had a really slow boat. It could go about 10 miles an hour and the average sport fishers go about 20 miles an hour. So we got word that all of the fish were about 60 miles away. So we calculated that if they're 60 miles away we've got to, we're not allowed to leave till seven in the morning, and we have to be back by five in the afternoon. Let's do the math here.

Seventy and seventy is a hundred and forty; we wouldn't even be able to get there in back in time. It was impossible for us to fish the area where, quote, all the fish were. So we were required to stay really close to Catalina Island. So all the boats took off in the morning, and they all went 70 miles away and apparently it was a very, very snotty day. Snotty means there were big waves. Lots of wind. The boats are rocking back and forth. Not a lot of fun.

Meanwhile we decided just to stay in the lea of the island. Enjoy the comfort and have a nice cruising day and just have a relaxing day getting some sun, because we couldn't get to where the fish were anyway. Los and behold, We weren't out there for a half an hour when we saw fish feeding on the surface, marlin. Now that's exactly what you want to see. This is an opportunity for us to catch fish. And we were... I have a hard time discussing this because many of you don't have the lingo. They don't talk the talk of marlin fishing. And so we would throw baits on these feeders, and we couldn't get them to go.

In the afternoon we saw a whole school of tailors coming down swell, and the boat was surrounded by this school of marlin. So we threw baits in the water, and all of a sudden somebody goes, "I'm bit. I'm bit." And then what happens is when they're bit the line starts going off the reel, and we use the boat to set the hook. So we used the boat and the boat... which means you gun the boat forward like a water skier coming out of the water, and that tightens the lines and it sets the hook in the fish. So I did that and the line goes ripping off of his reel, and out comes a seal. Unbelievable.

Later that afternoon we have two marlin on at the same time. I mean this is unbelievable fishing. It's the best marlin fishing in the local water I've ever had. I couldn't believe it. Everyone else had gone 70 miles away to catch fish. We had two marlin on at the same time. One was going one way, and the other ones going the other way. That's not a good sign.

Pretty soon a boat comes along and cuts one of the lines off they had so much line out. So then we focused on the other one. We bring it up to the boat and we try to get a gaff in this fish. Usually when you put a gaff in the fish that means you're able to bring it on board, but he was so strong he just took off, ripped the gaff out, went under the boat into the props, cut the line off and he was gone. Times up. End of day one with fishing.

Now fishermen know that you need to talk the walk. That's a big ocean out there. Now if you're traveling 70 miles in one direction and 70 miles in a different direction there's no way you can fish two different spots. And on normal circumstances we always share the information. However, on a day like that that kind of information that they don't have to travel 70 miles and fight all those waves is very, very, very valuable information, and we were the only ones who knew it.

I had a dear friend of mine. I call him my fishing instructor. He's the one that taught me how to fish. He said, Robert, how was the fishing here? I didn't lie. All I said was, Mike, stay here and fish. That's all I said. So the next day he stay's and fishes with us and guess what we saw in the morning? Nothing. Guess what we saw in the afternoon? Almost. We saw one fish, and it's called a jumper. And guess why they call them a jumper? They jump out of the water. And we see this fish jump out of the water about a quarter a mile away, and we gun the boat over, the both of us gun the boat over this area and we throw bait in the water, see if we can get them to bite our baits. Meanwhile, Mike has been in the area. He's been complaining all day there's no fish. Thought you told us to stay here. And complaining he doesn't have any coffee.

So I said, tell you what, why don't you come over here and we're right here, we've got some extra coffee, we'll give you some coffee. So as we're giving him his cup of coffee I still have my line out in the water. And literally as we're giving him a pot of coffee my reel starts to go off. And we hook a fish in this tournament and we land the fish and by the time we get back to the weigh station, we get there just in the amount of time, 'cause this boat is really slow. The fish pulled us off 10 miles off shore. We pulled up and they're weighing the fish in the sand, and we knew we did pretty good when they couldn't get him off the scale and they had to dig a hole in the sand to weigh the fish. We knew we won.

The point of the message is you have to share the walk. You have to talk the walk. You have to share with other people. Where are you going to go? Where the fish are. What's happening? What has God done in your life? What is He doing? And as we express and share the miraculous power of God, and how He transforms our lives, and inspires others, and encourages others, and it builds the kingdom of God.

A beautiful thing that I've learned about my mother is her integrity, and that's what we're talking about. We're talking about integrity. Where we talk the talk. We walk the talk, and we talk the walk. And that's what integrity is all about. It's being solid through and through. So what you display is who you are. And the person on the outside is the person on the inside. And you're a true individual through and through.

Faith, I don't think we could live without it. And I'm convinced that as we continue to receive this wonderful blessings through God's words, through His messages, through every encounter we have with Him. And as we continue to share those and walk that walk, that the world will continue to improve and be the place that God has called it to be. Let us pray:

Dear Heavenly Father we thank You for the privilege and the honor we have to talk the talk. To walk that talk and then to talk that walk. And so we thank You Lord for the privilege and the honor of the realization that You are alive today. That You are touching hearts and minds with Your reality, with Your goodness. That You're a God who cares. And so we thank You Lord for everything and we praise Your name always and forever, Amen.

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord grant you His peace in your lying down and in your rising up, in your labor and in your leisure, in your laughter and in your tears until you come to stand before Jesus in that day in which there is no sunset and no dawning, Amen.