This morning, you are going to get one of the only (if not the only) fill-in-the-blank sermons I ever intend to preach. Fill-in-the-blank sermons tend to work this way. The preacher comes to the pulpit with all the answers you need for your life’s questions. He or she provides you with a sheet of paper, as we have in your bulletin insert this morning, with partially finished statements. As the preacher goes through the sermon, you actually fill in the blanks with the answers he provides.

This morning, we are going to change that protocol just a little bit. I am not going to give you the answers to finish the sentences. I am going to ask you to fill in the blanks for yourself. There are a number of reasons for that. One of the main ones is, in the long run, we are all responsible for how we fill in life’s mysterious blanks. Whatever you might find your life situation to be, no matter what you may have accomplished or failed to accomplish in life, no matter what your assets or liabilities, the real question you will have to face is not so much what got you into this situation as much as where you should go from here?

Paul found himself in a situation where he was on the bottom side of under. Many of the letters we have in the New Testament that were recorded by Paul’s hand were written from prison. Most of us have never seen the inside of a prison and can’t imagine what that must have been like. Yet, from the inside of that situation, where most of us might have concluded that we had more going against us than for us, Paul makes three statements that I think we ought to all reflect on at this particular point in our lives.

This is a marvelous passage of scripture, 2 Timothy 1. It’s a great passage to use at any time of uncertainty in your life, when you’ve lost your job, when you’ve gotten the worst news you will ever get, when there isn’t enough money to pay the bills, when the church doesn’t have enough money, whatever the case may be, this passage of scripture gives us some possibilities for filling in the blanks that, I believe, are truly life-changing. One verse in particular is particularly encouraging and read from the old King James, is particularly poetic. "For I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day" (2 Timothy 1:12, KJV).

It provides us with the first blank which we are left to fill for ourselves. Paul wrote, "I know." I know ________. How would you fill in the blank?

Paul said, "I know whom I have believed." Yet, this is Paul’s testimony. This is not your testimony. It is not my testimony. It’s his testimony. We cannot make it ours simply by reading it or quoting it. It can be ours, but only if we choose to participate with him in the faith of which he gives witness. This morning, how would you fill in the blank, "I know ___________"? What do you know?

One of our senior adults was telling me this week about a trip to Alaska they are planning on taking. We were talking about how beautiful that place is, and how, in that magnificent place, the work of God’s creative hand is so clearly evident. He said, "When you look at all of this beauty and majesty in God’s creation, the only conclusion I can draw is that there has to be a God. When I see the mountains and the sea and all of creation, I know there is a God." In fact, he went on to say that anyone who would look at all of that and say there is no God has much more to explain than the person who would simply say, overwhelmed and humbled by it, "There must be a God."

Do you know that there is a God? Do you know that, personally? Do you believe in that God you say you know exists? What do you know? What do you know for absolute certain? What do any of us know for absolute certain? Do we know for certain that we will live to see retirement and that there will be enough money in savings to outlive our physical years? Do we know for a fact that our children will never suffer any kind of harm? Do we know for certain that we won’t suffer another terrorist attack? When you start making a list of the things that we know for absolute certain, we don’t know much for sure, do we?

I used to laugh at people who said, "The older I get, the less I know." These people were usually quite old, like 51 or something. Low and behold, I am here this morning to say it myself. The older I get, the less I know. The things that I once painted in black and white certainty are now many times more gray, not so certain.

What do we know? Scripture bears witness that we can know the God who has revealed himself to us in the person of Christ. "I know," Paul witnessed. When life around him was beginning to fall apart and he wasn’t certain of even the next day’s outcome, he could and did still confess, "I know whom I have believed. I know to whom I have entrusted my life."

Which brings us to the next thing he said: "I have." The first fill-in-the-blank, "I know," the second, "I have ___________" What do you have? The Apostle wrote, "I have what I have committed unto him." Another version of scripture reads, "What I have entrusted to him against that day." "I am sure," the scripture says, "I am certain that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him."

What do you have this morning? How would you fill in the blank? If a financial planner sat at your kitchen table today and started adding up your assets and liabilities, when the bottom line was reached, what would that look like?

I remember an old man some years ago, when I was in sales. He had a very modest job all of his life. He had pinched pennies and probably had 50 or 60 cents of every dollar that had ever crossed his palm. Just socked it away in CDs in the bank, year after year after year. Even with a very modest income, by the time I met him, his net worth was well into the millions in cash. His house had seen better days and so had the neighborhood around it, which had begun to deteriorate and had become less safe. His children had begun to encourage him, "Dad, if you would take just a little bit of the money you have saved, you could buy a house across town in a much safer neighborhood, where we wouldn’t worry about you so much." He had told them, "If I buy the house, I won’t have the money." The question that begs itself, when you think about situations like that, is, does the man have his money, or does the money have him?

The evidence of scripture from Genesis through Revelation, and even the evidence of my own experience and the experience I have seen in the lives of others, all we really have, when it’s all said and done, is what we have entrusted to Eternal God. No more, no less.

If God has said, and he has, "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse," (Malachi 3:10, NIV) and you don’t, is it possible that what you have is a trust problem? That’s a simple question. A fair question.

I’ve heard marriage counselors say for years that one of the things that tears more families up than anything else is money. I don’t agree with that. Money is as inanimate as the wood in this pulpit. Money has no power to make decisions or do anything. What destroys marriages is not money, but the way people value money and value each other. If two married people are tearing each other apart because they disagree with how money is being spent, what they are giving witness to is how they devalue each other more than they value money. So it is with churches. Churches don’t have money problems. Churches only have values problems.

"These three remain, faith, hope and love," Paul wrote earlier (1 Corinthians 13:13, NIV). The only things that will transcend time are not things, but only what we have invested through the use of our resources in faith, hope, and love. Only acts of faithfulness, hopefulness, and loving kindness are eternal in value.

Our Children’s Minister, Michelle Collins, was telling me about a first and fourth grader who attend here. They have been coming here for about two years. Their father died a couple of years ago and left them all but destitute. Last year, our church bought them school clothes so they could go to school. Since that time, those two little children, a first grader and a fourth grader, out of gratitude, have been bringing an envelope every Sunday with something in it. This past Over and Above Offering Sunday, these two little children who have no father, and who did not even have enough last year to buy school clothes, each brought an envelope with $10 in it, far outpacing the giving of many.

May I ask those of you who have given nothing financially to this church? I’m not talking about if you have given your time, or your energy, or even your prayers? I mean, you’ve never opened your wallet and put a dollar bill in the offering plate, let me just ask you a question. Would you be willing to at least match the gifts of those little first and fourth graders, and just take a chance and see what God might do with it? Would you take a $10 risk and see what happens?

"I know whom I have believed," Paul says. "I have what I have entrusted." Last, he says, "I will." I will what? For this particular fill-in-the-blank, we have to return to verse 3 in the text, where the Apostle writes to Timothy, his son in the faith, "I am grateful to God when I remember you constantly in my prayers, day and night." I am grateful. This is a man who has surveyed the landscape of his increasingly-difficult life and chosen to see it more in terms of what he has been given than in terms of what has been taken from him. I envy that. "I know whom I have believed." "I have what I have entrusted." But, to be able to fill in the blank with these words, even when the liabilities outweigh the assets, "I will be grateful," that’s faith!

On another occasion, this same Paul wrote, "in all things we should give thanks" (1 Thessalonians 5:18). We do know, or should, that does not mean that we should be thankful for evil things. "Love does not rejoice in evil but rejoices in the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:6). What it does mean is that there is never a time in a believer’s life when his or her kingdom assets don’t outweigh their earthly liabilities. I cannot, you cannot, none of us can control what will happen to us. None of us can control what others may do or say or think. The one thing over which we do have control is the choice, in any circumstance of life, to look around, to survey the landscape, and to find at least one thing, if nothing else but the presence of God with us, for which we can be thankful.

Some years ago, I heard a pastor tell the story of a woman who came down the aisle during the invitation at the end of the service. He took her by the hand and said, "Tell me why you have come this morning." This woman said none of the things a pastor would normally expect in that moment. She took the pastor by the hand, and said, "I’ve come this morning because last night, when I leaned over my baby’s crib and I looked into his face, I realized for the very first time in my life, I had to have someone to thank." The emptiest life in the world is a thankless life.

I was a little embarrassed at the preach-off a few weeks ago, when Richie Butler and I tied it on one Sunday night in Fellowship Hall, because at his last opportunity to get up, sure enough, Richie pulled the old football illustration ploy. Richie played football, free safety, at SMU. Just in case you weren’t aware of it, I did not. In fact, I am just now big enough to play high school football. So, I can’t use the old football stories like Richie Butler can. The one football story I do remember is about Tom Landry. My favorite memories of Tom Landry are from my junior high years, the late 60’s. My dad and I would go home after church on Sundays and turn on that little 14" black-and-white TV and watch the Cowboys play in the Cotton Bowl, where those light poles always got in the way. You remember?

There was Tom Landry, in his fedora hat, his black-and-white suits (I didn’t know until we got color TV that Tom Landry had any other color suits), the knot in his tie was always perfect. He never changed facial expressions . He was a class act. He put the "professional" in professional football. One of the things I remember about Tom Landry was that, no matter how bad the score ever got for the Cowboys, no matter how short the time on the clock, he never lost his cool. Until the bitter end of the last moment of the last game, no matter how the game was going for the Cowboys, he would keep sending in one more play until all the time was gone. He seemed to have some sense within him that, no matter how bad things ever got, he was never powerless to act in some kind of a positive way. His attitude not only built a team into a legend, it profoundly affected the culture of this city, specifically the Christian culture of this city. Here was a man who knew he always had the power to act, no matter how bad things got, in a positive way.

No matter how things may ever get for you or for me, we always have the power to give thanks. The saddest thing about some people is that they will have gone to church all of their lives and go to their grave, never having known the joy of giving. What a tragedy!

Hear me clearly this morning. Not just as your pastor, but as your fellow struggler in the faith, hear me clearly. No matter what your situation, you have the power to give something, if nothing but thanks. And, when you give thanks, everything else will find its proper place in your life.

Last summer, when Nancy and I went to Latvia and St. Petersburg, I saw one of the most touching examples of this I have ever seen in my life. In this particular orphanage, right outside of St. Petersburg, there were children who have absolutely nothing. The clothes they wear every day are the clothes that happen to be on the top of the stack when they walk by. You see, all the clothes are donated, and the kids gets in a line, and they walk by, and the boys and the girls take whatever shirt and pants are on the top, whether they are for boys or girls.

Nancy was working with a small group of little children. She put some blank pieces of paper out and gave them some little ink stamps. This one little girl had taken a stamp and made a colorful border on an 8½" x 11" piece of paper. Somewhere in all of that, one of the little boys caught her off guard and started marking on her paper. It upset the little girl terribly. This is not stuff that’s lost in translation.

This little boy had destroyed her beautiful work of art. It was also very obvious on his face that he felt terrible about having done so. He disappeared for a minute. When he came back, he produced an 8½" x 11" piece of paper on which he had also rubber stamped a beautiful and colorful little border of artwork on the border of the paper. He brought it to the little girl and, with the help of a translator, we learned what he said to her. This little boy, who lives in borrowed clothes, who has no mother and no father, nothing, took this one borrowed sheet of paper, bordered it with his artwork, gave it to the little girl, and said, "Here. You can mess mine up now."

He taught me a lesson. Nobody, in God’s economy, ever gets to the place where they don’t have something to give, if nothing but gratitude.

It’s yours to fill in the blanks. You can’t fill them in with Paul’s words, or mine, or anyone else’s. "I know." What do you know? "I have." What do you have? And, last of all, "I will." What will you do?

How will you fill in the blanks?