When I was about Tom Sawyer’s age there was genius advertising campaign someone came up with. They designed an advertising flyer for some event and arranged to have it dropped all over the town of Butler from a small airplane. I was out riding my bicycle with some friends when the drop happened. It was absolutely beautiful to see all those 8½ x 11 papers floating down from the sky. Absolutely brilliant advertising idea!
But the pilot was a little less than genius. When he dropped those hundreds of beautiful pieces of paper, the wind carried them blocks to the northeast where they dropped over open fields in what is now the Eastside High School and Maxton’s Park area.
My bicycle buddies and I ran into the fields to retrieve our booty. Hours later we had gathered stacks and stacks of advertisements. It was so cool! Then someone asked the obvious question, “What are we going to do with all these?” We were so excited about harvesting what seemed so valuable that we never asked the question, “Why?”
I think life can be like that. We can manically race around trying to get all we can get. Then, when we have to give account for our lives on judgment day, we will look back over what we have and ask the obvious question, “Why?” Did all that stuff really matter when we could have much more wisely invested our time and talent.
Ask yourself the question, “What are we going to do with all these?”
Tags: collect, greed, judgment, seeker, treasure, waste
I’m on vacation this week so am a little lazy getting this blog posted. Anita and I are spending some extra time with our granddaughter, Raegan. Also, I’m trying to get some winterization things done around the house, clean up the clutter in my study, and get most of our Christmas shopping done. Tonight Anita and I are going out to eat, and then will see the new movie Red.
I’ll still be preaching this weekend as we close out our Desert Discoveries series with the capstone theme Bitter Herbs.
Another project I’m working on this week is to track down the family of one of my early ancestors. This guy was born in 1800 in Hager’s Town, Maryland. I have tracked this ancestor from Maryland to Pennsylvania, to Ohio, and finally to Daviess County, Indiana, where he died. But I haven’t been able to identify his parents. I have a hunch the father was John Ramsey, but that is a common name and there are many John Ramseys. I cannot conclusively prove which one is correct, or even that John was the correct Ramsey. So far, I haven’t yet figured it out. I don’t want to waste time researching the wrong family.
Its like that in our faith, as well. You can’t prove God, but you can trust. But, if we go searching in the wrong direction, we just wander further away from Him, where it gets darker and darker. Let’s search in the right place: the Bible.
Tags: goal, seeker
Early in 2007 I became concerned with our church’s decreasing attendance and dwindling offerings. I had moved in the “seeker” track in an attempt to reach the lost in a culturally changing America. But while reaching a few lost ones, we were losing the past harvest. I sought the Lord about all this.
Then the Lord spoke to my heart. I’ve never tried to compare our church with others because I thought that was egotistical and wordly. But the Lord led me to think about the competition in our community. The largest churches around us are Sonlight Community Church in Angola (a Mennonite Church), Fairview Missionary (a Missionary Church), Dayspring Community Church ( another Missionary Church), Lakewood Park (a GAR Baptist Church), and County Line Church of God (a Church of God Church). These are all non- or anti-Pentecostal churches. They have all followed the seeker route and grown dramatically. And I know that for a business to succeed amid the competition, it must be first, fastest or better. But what was our “niche”? What does New Hope have to offer that none of these others has? And the answer was obvious: a solid belief in the ministry of spiritual gifts among the body.
And I also know that Pentecostal churches are much to blame for turning off people to spiritual gifts with their emphasis upon emotion (a function of the soul) and calling it a move of the Spirit. But the New Testament teaches us to believe in the supernatural working of a God who cares! And then I understood that we must find a balance between an expression of the gifts of the Spirit and keeping dignity in the House of God.
The Christmas movies we’ve all just watched prove to us that Americans really want to believe, but believing in Santa Claus or flying reindeer isn’t reality. And this upcoming young generation will not tolerate phony Christianity that just blesses ourselves at the expense of others. So I’ve decided to move into 2008 with a great expectation of a genuine visitation of God’s Spirit to set people free and give life as Jesus declared in Luke 4:18 (go read it carefully). That’s my New Year’s resolution.
Tags: churches, new year's resolution, Pentecostal, seeker, Spirit, spiritual gifts