Frankie Mazzapica - Children of God, Cheer Up
Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Frankie Mazzapica. The title of the message is "Children of God Cheer Up". Children of God Cheer Up. This message is for every single person in the room that feels a sense of discouragement whenever they think about their contribution to the kingdom of God. We love the Lord with our whole heart, but there are seasons where we think to ourselves: I don't think I'm much of a contributor. But I want to base the sermon today on a scripture that's found in 2 Chronicles chapter 35, verse 2.
See, in chapter 33, the king of Jerusalem was an evil man. His name was Manasseh. When Manasseh died, his son Amon took over. And the Bible says that he was more evil than his father. In chapter 35 of 2 Chronicles, Josiah's son... I'm, sorry, Amon's son, Manasseh's grandson, took over the throne. His name was Josiah. Now, this young man was a man of a different sort. He wasn't like the other people in his family. He was passionate about the things of God. He was well aware of his weaknesses. He knew he had an achilles' heel. He knew he had no chance of being perfect. But in the midst of it all, he had set his face like flint. Whether I am struggling, whether I am on the mountaintop, I will be pursuing God and worshiping God.
Is there anyone in this room like that? Come on. Encourage me if that's you. When you clap, you're praising God and you're encouraging me as well, so look at the person next to you and say: come on, let's encourage him this morning. Go ahead. All right, so here we go, in 2 Chronicles chapter 35, verse 2, Josiah is trying to change the culture that his grandfather and father had established. And so, he's wanting to reestablish the temple, he's wanting to recreate a culture of worshipers, and so he says this in verse 2. He says and Josiah took the priest, he placed the priest within their charge. And he encouraged them in their service in the house of God. So he placed the priest, the person who spoke about God, he read the scrolls and spoke of the things of God. He says get back in your place and begin to speak of the Lord.
Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, he begins to look at everyone else and says all of you, every single person that hears my voice, you are not to remain idle. You are not allowed to stand and watch us as we worship our God. As we rebuild the temple, you are not allowed to be inactive. Now, there were people who fell into three categories... or four categories. The first category are the people it's like, I have been waiting for this, let's go. And then there was the category, and these are the three categories I'm gonna talk about.
Number one, I honestly would love to be a contributor, but I don't have anything to offer. The second category are the people that say I used to be a great contributor. There was a season of my life where I was in the ranks within a church, within a ministry, and I was a significant contributor. However, the seasons have changed and I'm no longer as important as I used to be. That's category number two. And the third category is the person that says I want to be a contributor, but I'm only a one talent person. I really don't have much to offer. So let's just tackle that first category, the person who feels like they have nothing to offer.
In this point, the primary thing that I want to get across is if you are worshipping while you're working, you are sending melodies into the presence of God. C'mon. If you are worshipping while you're working, melodies are going into the presence of God. If you are an individual who is carrying great responsibility at your place of employment, it's requiring a lot of time. It's even requiring time, oftentimes, before work, after work. You do your best to not bring work home. It's a heavy burden. We're talking way more than 40 hours, sometimes it's only 30 hours or 25 hours, but it's a heavy burden.
I want to tell you this. As you live life, don't allow the enemy to tell you that you are not a contributor if you are one who worships while you work because when you worship while you work, you're sending melodies to God. If you are a person that doesn't necessarily carry heavy weight at a place of employment, but you carry heavy weight with your family. They're constantly drawing upon you. I'm thinking of a family now in our church where her parents draw from her, they depend on her. She's a married woman, but yet her parents depend on her. Her children depend on her. Her sisters depend on her. They draw from her. And when you are that person, when other people are depending so much on you, it's very hard to take your mind's attention and put it on the things of God, take your heart and put it on the things of God. It's very, very difficult.
And I would tell you that if you are worshiping while you are working, you are sending melodies to God. My my wife, when we first started the church 17 years ago, she used to come on the stage with me and she would encourage the congregation before I spoke. And then our three kids started to get older. They were just babies when we started, started getting older. And as they started getting older, the demand of being a mom began to pull on her. Well, she was preparing every week because you deserve something that comes from her heart, so she was preparing every single week. Then there was this moment, it was a conversation that I'll never forget, she said, "I feel like my season has shifted. It's time to shift from the platform to parenting. I've got to give exclusive attention to my children. I can't do what I used to do. This season has shifted".
If you are the parent where your kids now are demanding and need the attention from you, I want you to know that if you are working and you are worshiping at the same time, you're sending melodies to God. In 2... no, in 1 Corinthians chapter 12... no, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, it's in Romans chapter 6, verse 13, Paul says this: "Do not let your body be an instrument to serve evil. You used to be dead, but now you have a new life. So let every part of your body be an instrument to serve God, to do what is good".
Every part of your body. If you are working, you're serving, you're spread thin, but you have reserved your mouth and your words and your tone and your expression and your look and the way you dress and the way you treat people, if you have reserved yourself to be an instrument to God, you are sending melodies into the presence of God, and the Lord says this: your worship is like sweet incense in my presence. Come on, this, for those of you that says I have nothing to offer. I'm not the charismatic, I don't have a million friends and I don't have a stack of dollars, I want you to know that when you worship, angels cannot understand the intimacy that you are able to establish with the Creator of the world.
They cannot understand it because they have the luxury of being in the presence of God and looking at the Son of God. You and I, we don't have that luxury, but yet we worship. For those of you who say I don't have anything to offer, I want you to know you are an oracle of God. You are an instrument of God, and regardless of what happens, fill your mouth with praise and don't ever stop. In Psalms chapter 34, verse 1, it says: "I will bless the Lord at all times and his praises will always be on my lips". That's for the person who thinks they have nothing to offer. Come on, do you receive that today?
The second category is the person who feels like they were a contributor at one time in their life, but now the seasons have changed. They don't feel as important in the ranks of the army of God. You know, that's a fascinating situation to be in because the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 27, it says you are the body of Christ. And all of you belong in that body. So all of you are the body of Christ, and here's the thing about the body, is some of us are an external part of the body that people can see. Others of us are an internal part of the body that nobody can see.
Let me illustrate. The hands, anything you do with the hands, everybody can see. If I'm building something, you can see it. As you are listening to me today and you see me movin' my hands about, you can see it. This is representative of a person who has a ministry that everybody can witness. The person who are the feet of God. This person is being sent different places, sent to family members, sent to friends, sent to cities, doing missionary trips. This is a person who's being sent, and everybody can see them. But the internal parts of a body, like the lungs.
Now, those you cannot see, but they're incredibly critical. It's not a public part of the body of Christ, it's a private part of the body of Christ, but if you take the lungs out of a body, the body is dead. The lungs, the part that no one can see, is critical to the body. In Proverbs chapter 11, verse 25, it says those who bless others, or those who refresh others, they themselves shall be refreshed. How do you refresh someone? How do you do that? It's your words and the actions you do one-on-one that encourages someone to the point that they feel like their lungs are being filled with air, filled with strength, filled with new life, filled with courage. They were down, they were encouraged, they wanted to quit, they felt like they were defeated, but yet when you spoke to them, you filled their lungs with life.
That's the inside. Those are the things that nobody sees. Typically, it's one-on-one. It's a phone call. It's a text message. This is very important. Take, for example, the heart. Nobody can see the heart. No one can see, but it's the most important part of the body. What does the heart represent? The most important part of God's body, of the body of Christ, has always been and will always be prayer. Prayer beats the heart of the body of Christ. If the body of Christ stops praying, then the church falls apart, the church falls apart. One preacher can live a whole life and pass away. Another preacher can live his whole life and pass away, but if the church ever stops praying, the entire kingdom of God is now in jeopardy. You're the most important person that has ever prayed.
Did you know in Psalms 56:9, that the very day you call for help, the tide of the battle moves. When you pray for your children, the very day you call for help, the tide of the battle shifts. You say, well, I'm not seeing any difference. My son, the knucklehead, I pray for him, he's still a knucklehead. The tied is shifting in the supernatural. Sometimes you have to win in the supernatural before you see the victory in the natural. Do you believe that? Come on. You gotta win on your knees before you get to see it on your feet. Sometimes you gotta win it.
Margaret Thatcher once said there are some battles you have to fight more than once just to win. I'm calling you out. I'm challenging you to be one of those people that say I am a prayer warrior. I might feel like I am not important in the ranks. Because nobody can see me. I'm private. I used to be public. I wanna tell you without a heart, the body can't live, it cannot live. If you know me at all, you know that one of my favorite preachers of all time is a guy by the name of Charles Finney. He's one of the guys who started the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. I believe it started in 1795, and I think it went to like 1817 or 1820, but he was one of the ones who started it.
Now, the Great Awakening is not a great church service. It's not like that. The Great Awakening is when the presence of God was so strong within a church service that people who were not saved would literally shake and hang on to their chair and beg for forgiveness. These people would pray with such fervency and passion that they did not want to leave and go home. They would stay there for hours. There's certain history books that say that a bystander that's just passing by the building would begin to feel the presence of God and fall to their knees and raise their hands. There's one report that says that in certain places, this is not the Second Great Awakening, this is the Azusa Street Revival in 1900, where they could see fire, literally physical fire above the church.
There's certain awakenings that are unlike anything any of us have ever seen, and Charles Finney was one of the leaders of the Second Great Awakening. Wouldn't you know that that great awakening that rumbled across our country, literally across the country, started with people who were on their knees praying. That's where it started. Finney was not a great orator like Whitfield or his contemporaries, no, no, no. He spoke softly. He was a former attorney before he became a preacher. And when the power of God would fall, it was unexplainable because he didn't have great oratory gifts, but he had a best friend named Daniel Nash, and Daniel Nash would go ahead of him to the city that he planned to go. He would check himself into a hotel and he would cry out to God for hours, days, and weeks.
History books says that they could hear him screaming out and pleading for a move of God all the way down the street. There were people who opened the door and knocked on the door to see if he was okay, and then whenever he felt like he had touched God's garment, when he had broken through, then he would send a message to Charles Finney and say this place is ready. And he would show up and there would be fire. He never, Daniel Nash never sat in the sanctuary. He was never in the service. He stayed in his hotel room and prayed the entire time.
I want to show you the church that this all started in with Charles Finney. It wasn't a big church. It was a small chapel just like that. In our day and age, it would be the chapel that people would want to get married in. It's wooden pews with a center aisle that sat about 80, maybe 90 people. But there were a group of people, naturally a small group of people, that prayed in the church, that prayed at night, that prayed in each other's homes, and it was marked, their prayers were marked by being united, fervent, and agonizing. When they prayed, it was not: Dear Lord, will you move? Dear God, will you touch us? Lord, we want more. We want more of you.
Do you know that if your prayers put you to sleep, they're probably putting God to sleep as well? The prayers have to move you before they move God. Are you with me, say amen to that. If your prayers are boring you, then the angel standing next to you is just waiting for you to be done. Let's go do somethin' else. But they were marked by being united, fervent, agonizing, persevering. You know what persevering is? Persevering is when you're praying but you feel like you're talking to the wall. Persevering is when you look at someone else and they seem to be dialed in to the presence of God, but you yourself feel like you're just boring all of heaven. But you keep praying fervently.
What does fervently look like? Fervently is passion. Fervently is when you visualize the face of God and you passionately pray. And I want to say for those of you that are new at praying, there's nothing more powerful than saying Jesus, Jesus, I love you. Jesus, Jesus, I love you. If you say that for 4 hours, there's nothing else that's more powerful than shouting the name of Jesus as an instrument on this earth. There's nothing more powerful than that. But prayer... and Charles... who said this?
Charles Spurgeon said this: A prayer without fervency is like hunting with a dead dog. People who pray, people who cry out for God cause a wall of fire to be around their children, their home, and like a blaze of fire before them, and they're walking and treading only where angels walk. This is what happens when someone says I may not hold the rank of a public leader, but I am a worshiper, I am a pray-er. There's no one here that's been set aside. Your season may have changed, what you do may have changed, but you are more important than what you think you are. Do you receive that?
Come on. The last category is the person who says I do have something to contribute. I'm aware of it, but it's just not much. The Lord taught a lesson in Matthew chapter 25. It's a message about talents. And the Lord says this: to one person, I gave five talents. They had a lot. They had everything that they needed to be effective. To another person, I gave two talents. They didn't have everything that the person with five talents had, but at least they had options. They had a couple gifts they could use. But then there was a person who was only given one talent. They weren't good at anything at all except for one thing. And he's surrounded by a person who could do everything.
Have you ever met a person who can play the piano, they can sing, they're smart, they're successful, they're good looking, and you look at 'em and you're like, this is not fair at all. Are you with me? Say yes. They are a five talent person. Then you back up and you say I'm a one talent person. How am I to be a contributor? If you feel like you have nothing to offer, if you feel like you've been set aside or you only have one talent, we need you. And if you do the only things that you know how to do, your family will be affected, your friends will be affected, and when you stand before God, there will be a parade for you when you show up. I want you to know that. Do you receive that?