Tonight I spoke on simplicity. Launched out of Judges 6-8 and the story of Gideon. Less is more. Trust God. Glorify Him. I actually had a lot of fun telling the story of Gideon and challenging folks to critically look at some of our modern conveniences. The whole application point really boiled down to Security, Storage, and Simplicity. Maybe that would of been a better title than the simply put "Less is more".
Some surprise congregants...
my boss... Was scheduled to be on vacation but stayed home and came to church. Told me, "less is more, you went for nearly 50 minutes". Interesting comment from a guy that talked about being careful with your tongue this morning. What was up with that?
my mom... Was in Laughlin all week end and had some real challenges. I didn't think she would stop by for a long winded preacher on her way home. Momma didn't say much but you know she loved it...That's just how mommas are.
my bro... came on his own to the church where we both grew up. This meant a lot to me. Some possibly well intentioned folks made some fairly judgemental comments and I'm pretty frustrated. T-Spoon had some very nice things to say about appreciating what I do, ... regardless of these people.
HERE'S THE RANT!
Tonight I felt like I had to apologize to my brother for the stupid things other people said. I also felt like I had to express my own gratitude for him making the physical, financial, and emotional effort to be in church and hear me preach. I felt like I had to clarify that I don't personally agree with this "If you died tonight..." approach to evangelism and also voice my own frustrations about people's (especially christian people's) inability to just be nice and love people with out coming across like "I'm better than you... and you could be better too... if you were just like me". I said all these things and I never prefaced my questions with "I just have to ask" or added the addendum "I had to say that", or inserted into my offerings of our conversation any other excusatory parenthetical clauses. Why? Because if you have to say, "I just had to say" You're wrong. You didn't have to. And further more... you should not have. No way! You need to allow the redemptive love of Jesus to come through you. This, "us and them", "in or out", reductionism is not working. It's time to try something new!
END OF RANT
The night was redeemed when my mom and bro both came over for some family fun that involved chicken, macaroni, black beans, karaoke revolution, and three happy toddlers. It was a pretty good day.
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