Let us give thanks to God for every spiritual blessing he has given us.

What are two of your favourite days in the year? I bet that they are probably Christmas and your birthday and we have just recently enjoyed at least one of those days. (Letitia of course wraps both days into one being born on December25!). It doesn't matter how old we are but those two days in particular remain special for all of us.
One reason they are special is because they are times when people who love us like to express that love. They usually do this by giving us presents. And we all like to receive parcels and wonder what is inside them.
There are other times in the year or other occasions when love is expressed by the giving of gifts. A wedding anniversary perhaps or a graduation. It seems that a gift is the best way to put in to a tangible form our love for that person.

There have been times when I know I have felt so moved by what someone has done for me that I have yearned to respond by giving a small gift. I think of a special person who at a very difficult time for me, simply sat, held my hand, and provided the shoulder I needed. Later, words seemed inadequate to express my gratitude and when I came across a small but special book I simply had to buy it as a gift for that person as a way of saying "thank you for your love".
We don't need special occasions to want to say "I know that you love me and I am grateful". A bunch of flowers, an un-birthday gift, "I saw that you needed a new whatever and so I got this for you". All of those unexpected gifts become very special to us because they are a token expression of a deep feeling.

On Friday it was Epiphany and this marks the end of the period of Advent and Christmas. There is an old story that all decorations put up for Christmas must come down on January 6th. If they stay up after that you will be inviting witches and other nasties to come and get you.
In the church Epiphany marks the coming of the Magi or wise men to worship at the cradle of the baby Jesus. We all know the story of the coming of these men and that they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to mark the occasion. We can understand their wish to present precious gifts. We do the same thing today. We celebrate with new mothers by giving them gifts of flowers or things for the baby.

Today, the first Sunday after Epiphany we celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John in the River Jordan. Baptism is truly one of the greatest of God's gifts to us. In the baptism of Jesus God publicly acknowledged that Jesus is his son and that he has sent him. Jesus is God's gift to his people.
At baptism Jesus received the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this is a gift that is bestowed on all of us at our own baptism. It is a very special gift because it makes us members of God's family.
BECAUSE OF HIS LOVE GOD HOD ALREADY DECIDED THAT THROUGH JESUS CHRIST HE WOULD MAKE US HIS CHILDREN - THIS WAS HIS PLEASURE AND PURPOSE. LET US PRAISE GOD FOR HIS GLORIOUS GRACE, FOR THE FREE GIFT HE GAVE US IN HIS DEAR SON.

God has given us everything. He has given us the world and everything that is in it. He has also given us every spiritual blessing when he made us his through our union with Christ.

What is our response to this generosity? Do we want to give a gift to God? We know it will only be a token - that we cannot compete with his generosity, but if we have a feeling of overwhelming gratitude then we will yearn to respond in a tangible way.

Now, feelings are all very well, but they need to be put into actions. It is not much good feeling sorry for the person who is lonely if you do not act on your feelings and go and visit or telephone them. It was not good enough for Peter and John to want the people of Samaria to receive the Holy Spirit. They had to actually go to Samaria and place their hands on them before they received the gift of the Spirit.

A desire to do something that never goes any further is a very sad thing. Over the holiday break we have a surfeit of sport on television- yachting, cricket, golf; tennis, iron man surf carnivals, and so on. Whatever sport the athletes participate in, they all wish to succeed and win - but desire is not enough. They have to put the desire into action. They train very hard for very long periods just so that they will have some hope of achieving their goal.

Similarly this week the achievements of some of our top students have been published and acknowledged in the paper. In each story of congratulations there has been mention made of the amount of study and the sacrifices these students have made so that they could achieve the spectacular success they have. Obviously every student wants to do well and those who succeed - even those who do not win prizes - has had to do more than just wish and dream.

There have been times - more than I care to remember - when I have thought to do or say something but I haven't got around to it. I have had the wish or the desire but not the action and so my good impulse has meant absolutely nothing.
The tragedy of life is not that we have not had high impulses - but that we have failed to act upon them. I wish I had written more often to my friend overseas. I wish I had planted the daffodil bulbs in time. I wish I had put money away for a rainy day. And so on. You can make up your own list of things that you thought to do but never quite managed to act upon.

God loves us, he has given us so much and our impulsive response to that love is to want to give something back to God and to share his love with other people wherever they are.
Our fine feelings are to want to give. But feelings are no good unless we put them into action. Unless we act on our feelings, then we will achieve nothing. We will not feel good. God will not receive even a token expression of our gratitude for what he has done for us.
We put our feelings into action when we give of our time, our talents and our possessions to the work of the Church in mission and ministry.

I spoke earlier about one time when I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude to a certain person. My responsive action was to give him a small gift. Now the strange thing is, that in giving that gift I received again. I felt wonderful because of the pleasure I was able to give him in expressing in a tangible form my thanks.
It is the same when we respond to God's goodness to us. Not only do we feel wonderful because we are putting feelings into actions, but our actions lead us to achieving other things as well.
Each week we act on our response to God's generosity to us when we make our offering. We offer a token gift from our monetary possessions. That is, we put our feeling of gratitude to God for his goodness to us, into action.

Those gifts are then used to help the Church resource its work in sharing God's love with all people. Our action achieves something worthwhile. There are a myriad of stories of how this is being done. Sharing these stories with you and all church members is part of my job. Some of these I have shared with you when I have led worship here and each month in Western Impact there are stores of how we, the church, are reaching out to people

In our society and today's world, our response to God's generosity is usually in the form of money and is related to our income. We may feel a great sense of gratitude to God but the size of our income and the calls that are made upon it may restrict how much we feel we can offer back to him.

We give thoughtfully - thinking of our own responsibilities and our own needs.
We give thankfully - expressing our gratitude for all that we have.
We give sacrificially recognising that others needs are greater than our own.

We give from our income but most of us actually have two pockets - an income pocket and an accumulated assets pocket. To many people the income pocket is getting smaller and smaller. They may feel a real sense of frustration at not being able to contribute to the work of the church in the way that they have been used to doing in the past.

But many people are also finding that their accumulated assets pocket is growing. It is increasing without any effort on their part. In fact it would not be unusual for the accumulated assets pocket to contain 100 times the current income pocket! For retirees the disparity is frequently even greater.

Most of us give to God only from our income pocket. We don't think about giving also from our other pocket - our assets pocket. We give from our assets pocket when we give consideration to leaving a bequest to the church.
Now some of us will find that we can make a gift to God's church far larger than any we may consider during our lifetime if we recognise that we have two pockets for our giving. We may find that we can make the kind of gesture that we thought beyond our means while we were living. We can really turn our desires into action.
When I talk about your assets pocket, most of us will think about things like houses and land that we own. But also included in this pocket are things like life insurance policies. These policies often provide a way for us to make the generous response we would like to make but without depriving our family of their inheritance.

I know of one Uniting Church minister who has taken out an insurance policy on his life and named the Church as the beneficiary. His only income throughout his life has been a ministerial stipend. His income has supported a wife and they have brought up three children. He pays a small amount each month on a personal life insurance policy. When he dies, the church will benefit by at least 90,000. That is a sum that he would never have thought would be within his means to give.
This parish in particular has benefited from members who have respond to God's love with the gift of a bequest. Because of the generosity of these people this parish has been able to reach out to people in this locality and also to those further afield. Gifts have enabled this parish to resource the mission work of the church in many different ways. It has provided for mission work amongst drug addicts through resourcing of Palmerston House, and for ministry and mission in our growing northern suburbs through support of Beldon parish just to name two projects.

The size of the bequest is immaterial. Of the 22 bequests received by the Uniting Church WA Synod last year 10 were sums of less than 5000. It is the fact that people have had a desire to respond to God's love and generosity towards them. They have had a desire and have put that desire into action. They have not had fine impulses and failed to act upon them.

I want to finish with a little story.

      A certain Christian once said to a friend, "Our church cost too much. They are always asking for money" The friend replied thus, "Some time ago a little boy was born into our home. He cost a lot from the very beginning. He had a big appetite, he needed clothes, medicine, toys, even a puppy. Then he went to school and that cost a lot more. Later he went to university; then he began dating and that cost a small fortune! But in his last year of university he was stricken ill and died. Since his funeral he hasn't cost me a penny. Now, which situation do you think I would rather have?"

      After pause he continued, "As long as a church lives it will cost money. When it dies for want of support, it won't cost anything. A living church has the most vital message for the world today. I am going to give and pray with everything I have to keep my church alive."

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