Biography
Reverend David Stoner is pastor of St. James Episcopal Church in Alexander City, Alabama. He is known widely as a popular speaker and lecturer. His compelling tapes have topics including failure, gift giving and being ourselves. He is a director of “Faith at Work” and “Faith Alive”. After raising his four boys as a single parent, he entered seminary in 1982 and was ordained 3 years later. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

"The Kingdom Within" 
I want to read to you a few verses of scripture from Paul’s second letter to the church in Corinth. The 5th chapter, beginning with the 18th verse.

All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself — not counting their trespasses against them but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors of Christ.

In the scripture Paul is telling us that we have been reconciled to God in Christ Jesus. It has happened. And that we are called, therefore, to be reconcilers in the world.

However, I want to suggest that before we can be Christ’s ambassadors, his reconcilers in the world, we must first be reconciled with ourselves. We must claim the kingdom within us. We are reconciled to God by his action in the incarnation. However, I’m convinced that until we accept this reconciliation, until we accept the incarnation — word made flesh, Jesus the Christ — accept Christ by accepting ourselves, we cannot join with all created by God in living our destiny toward eternal life.

Paul tells us, “To choose Christ is to choose ourselves because God has chosen us and made us partakers of his nature.” We must choose ourselves. Repenting, wanting to be accountable to God for that good and perfect work he has done in our very creation. Accepting our forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, which is even harder. And “re-visioning” ourselves as God’s chosen people.

One of my favorite verses in the whole Bible is from Psalm 139. It says, “I will praise the Lord for I am strangely and wonderfully made.” I wonder how many of you get up in the morning and it occurs to you to say, “I will praise the Lord, for I am strangely and wonderfully made.”? Some mornings I do, some mornings I forget. In the Genesis story we read that God created us and said, “It is good.” Meaning “You are good, even I am good.”

But we say, “No I am not good. But if I work hard, do good deeds, get rich, lose 10 pounds, marry a rich man, grow a beard... Maybe then I’ll be good, or at least acceptable.”

I can remember a time in my adolescence — and you’ll appreciate this if you will remember that I grew up in a very small southern town. And you can imagine the discomfort my mother felt when she heard me say that if I could ever live long enough to have a convertible automobile, a leather jacket and a tattoo, I knew I’d be alright. Well, here I am, 54 years old and I don’t have enough hair for a convertible, and I don’t really want a leather jacket and I’m afraid a tattoo would hurt. And I’m still checking out to see if I’m doing alright — although, not as much as I used to.

I think most of us were born wearing a tee-shirt that says, “How am I doing?” on the front and “Try harder” on the back.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans we read, “The whole world is standing on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of the sons of God coming into their own.” That’s powerful imagery. To think that if I ever become all that God created me to be it would be so exciting that the whole world would stand on tiptoe just to get a glimpse.

Jesus said, “You are the light of the world”. Not “Go out and get some light”, or “you need some light”, or “don’t you wish you had some light?” or not even, “You ought to have some light”. But he says, “you are light!”

As we continue our journey of reconciliation as feeling, baptized Christians, we must acknowledge this promise, we must claim our heritage, our inheritance as children of the king, as being complete, unique, perfect in our creation even now. Unfortunately, most of us look to outer sources to meet inner needs. We are never quite able to do enough, achieve enough, acquire enough, perform well enough to get these needs satisfied, and I probably am guiltier than most.

I know in my role as a single parent I certainly looked to that role as a way of being good enough to at last be acceptable. I wanted desperately to be a perfect parent. What I didn’t realize was that to be a perfect parent you have to have perfect children. And even though I wrote an excellent script for mine, they are a little bit obstinate and refused to read it, or if they read it, they didn’t like it and didn’t follow it and I never quite made it as a perfect parent, but I kept trying. I knew if I could ever just do enough I would get the blessing.

I can remember, once, I was on Frederica Island which is one of the barrier islands off the coast of Georgia, and there’s a beautiful, historical, old church there called Christ Church. And it has many, many fine stained glass windows. I was going through the church and I came across a stained glass window that obviously had been given by some children in memory of their mother because on the plaque it said, “and they will rise up and call her blessed.” I remember thinking, “That’s how it’s going to be. One day, mine will rise up and call me blessed.” Well, the oldest one is now 33, the youngest is 26, and so far they’ve only called me collect. Again, looking to outer sources to meet inner needs.

Father Martin Bell, a preacher of the church, in his book, The Way of the Wolf, wrote a song that says:

God likes me just the way I am.
I turned out just right.
But I’ll sing it again in case I forget.
And strange as it seems, I might.

We do forget. And then when we forget we begin to live as if we had been left out all on our own to work out our own redemption, and life gets pretty grim.

I want to suggest some disciplines to you. If you will practice them, walking as a Child of the Light will become natural to you, instead of rare, and you’ll no longer look for outer sources to meet inner needs. These are some very practical suggestions that I’ve found work for me to help me claim that good and perfect thing that was done for me in my creation and completed for me in the death and resurrection of my Lord.

And the first thing I want to suggest is that you choose to see the positive things about yourself and others, rather than the negative. I’m convinced this is God’s intention for us. The reason I’m convinced is that a little child revealed it to me. He just naturally chose to see the positive.

When my number two son was 4 or 5, entering Kindergarten — whatever age that is — (I think some of them stay 4 or 5 years). But starting at 4 or 5 he developed the very unattractive habit of biting his nails. I did all the creative things you do when a child bites his fingernails, I wrapped them in gauze, I told him how unattractive his fingers were, and begged him not to, and even bought stuff at the drug store that tasted bad so that it would be an unpleasant experience for him. Nothing seemed to work, except one day he seemed to stop biting his nails. They grew nice and long. I complimented him and affirmed him and told him how wonderful it was. I tried to give him all the positive reinforcement I could.

To my surprise, one morning he came to breakfast and he had bitten the nails off again, right down to the quick. And I said, “Oh Gus, you’ve bitten your fingernails again!”

And without even thinking, this innocent 5 year old, looked at me and said, “Yeah, but I still have my foot nails.” I blew it with 10, Dad, but I’ve still got 10 good ones.

We need to learn to rethink that way. I wish I could tell you that that child thinks that way today, but he doesn’t because I taught him better, and it breaks my heart.

Learn to see the positive and accept the positive. It’s scary to accept the positive because we then have to become accountable for them and responsible for that which we affirm. That’s how we begin to walk as God’s children.

To help you learn to accept the positives, I want you to make a list. I mean write these down because it’s important that you do so. Make a list and divide yourself into five areas. Your physical positives, your emotional positives, your intellectual positives, your behavioral positives and your spiritual positives. Ask yourself, “What are my physical positives?” Remember, if they are important to you and you can affirm them that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter if they matter to anyone else or not. And you need never show anyone your list. In fact, I certainly wouldn’t show you mine, even though I’m about to tell you my big secret. My main and most important physical positive for me is I’m 54 years old and I have a 32 inch waistline. Now, I don’t know why that’s important, no one has ever rushed up to me on the street and said, “Lo, I behold your 32 inch waist!” Maybe, I keep thinking that some knitwear company will want a mature model. I don’t know. Other than that, when I get up in the morning and I behold my 32 inch waist, it makes me feel good. So whatever physical positive you can affirm, write it down.

I phoned someone this afternoon, and I said, “All my life, I have said as an out in introductions to conversation, ‘Of course, I’m not very bright.’ I finally realized that I said that so that if I said something dumb, I’d already told you I was dumb, and if I said something that was not dumb, we could all be surprised. I now have to acknowledge that I have a good mind, and I have to take the responsibility of that good mind.”

But list in those 5 categories, physical, emotional, intellectual, behavioral and spiritual, your positives. Put that list where you can see it, read it every morning, thank God for that good and perfect thing that he has done in your life. It pays to be a good steward of those positive aspects — and celebrate the day! If you want to go a step further, and you may find this a little bit difficult, but I suggest you to do it, on that same piece of paper, write across the bottom, “My name is , and I’m a child of the King.” Read that, say it out loud to yourself, 3 times in the morning and 3 times in the evening before you go to bed. Your subconscious will begin to believe it, and what our subconscious believes, we act on. Begin to internalize and live out who you are in God’s Kingdom.

Secondly, be consistent in what you say and do. “Choose this day whom you will serve.” You can’t serve two masters. Decide what captures you and commit yourself to it, totally. I've seen many, many Christians, and a lot clergy, get mired up in the muck of sin, not because they were evil, but because they were half-won Christians. Be consistent in what you say and do.

Third, practice being in the now, the present. Not the past where we play “if only”, not the future where we get bogged down in with the “what ifs” and the “whens” and the “somedays”. The fact of the matter is today is all we have, it’s all we need and it’s all we can handle. Learn to live in the present. Celebrate the temporary.

Fourth, choose to come up as fast as possible with alternatives to reduce stress. Never stay in a stressful situation when there is a positive alternative to it.

Five, never apologize for what you cannot do. There is no apology necessary. All of us are given gifts, and our gifts vary, but none of us are competent in every area. Accept the gifts you have been given and use them.

Last, I want you to eliminate one word and one phrase from. your vocabulary. The word is try. Try I want you to eliminate because it has no definition. No one can tell you what that means. Trying, actually, is lying. You are either doing something or you aren’t doing something. And if you are doing it, affirm it, and if you aren’t, be responsible for it. Most of us spend our lives trying to cook supper, trying to raise our children, trying to make a living. With me, for years, it was trying to quit smoking. I wasn’t trying, I was smoking. Get rid of that word.

And notice “have to”. Get rid of that phrase, “have to”, because you don’t have to. All you have to do in this world is die. When you say “have to” you feel like a victim and a child of the King never feels like a victim. What we do is we choose to and how much more creative to say, “I choose to go to work in the morning”, instead of ruining a perfectly good Sunday evening by saying, “I have to go to work in the morning.” “Have to” and “try” — get them out of your vocabulary.

And remember the circumstances of life, the events of life and the people around us in life, could not make us who we are. Our reactions and response to those situations, events and people, do reveal who and whose we are.

“You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

So take what you can that I’ve offered this evening. Use it to get on with your journey. Your journey that is your response to that high calling to you by God in Christ Jesus. Reconciled, reconcilers, ambassadors for Christ.