The Sermon

It has been a couple of weeks since the sermon, but that isn't due to shock or embarrassment. It is due to the demands of time.

The message of the day was simple... we are called into a LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS. The difficult/scary/nerve-wracking/peaceful in a wired sort of way thing was that the way this was delivered in the two services was similar in nature, but radically different in not only where we ended up, but how we got there.

The best way to summarize what the Lord did is this... after the first service I was approached by several people who shared some way that the message had touched them. The interesting thing is that what they shared was vastly different. . The first service definitely headed toward a call to the love Jesus and love HIS BODY. I talked a lot about my adopted Grandma Dorothy who passed away that week and how she totally, radically changed my life... simply through her love relationship with Christ that radiated from her. I ended up talking about about mentoring and modeling a lot, but mostly about how our love for Jesus should be so evident that anyone and everyone in our church should be able to see it.

The second service the same thing happened. The sermon clearly took a different path and a different emphasis at the end, but it was very similar in the focus on loving Jesus. In fact that is what it was all about. Can others see that you are clearly utterly in love with Jesus? ... the way I saw it in Grandma Dorothy? The same reaction occurred, lots of conversations afterwards, sharing lots of different ways the message spoke to them.

Now I know that this happens in every sermon. Different folks get different things out of it, but this really was way more drastic and way different than that. It felt to me as if Jesus came into that place and guided my words even more than He ever had before. It felt as if He walked through our church family and sat down beside each person and shared some time with them. It was as if He personally invited each person into a deeper, more intimate, more sincere, more obvious love relationship with Him. It was as if He Was There!

I have seen people cry in a sermon before, but never like this. A few people commented on the same thing, that they had never seen such a large amount a congregation moved in that way. Young adults, senior adults, teens and all those in between... there were so many in tears. I promise that the only explanation I could come to was that Jesus was there in a very real way and when we encounter our Christ in that intimate of a setting it moves us. The words of the sermon disappear and face of Jesus takes center stage as He draws us into his arms.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make a lot of sense. It is late. I played too much basketball tonight, so I am a little dizzy right now, but I wanted to get this out, to share some thoughts on that sermon, to stop leaving you hanging from my last post.

The Lord really stretched me through this. It was so amazing to me how the use of my gift broke me, stretched me and molded me, while He used it to do the same in others. I was really broken and stretched during that week, even that morning I felt tense when I awoke and realized He was actually sending me up to the pulpit with what He had given me and no more. This journey with Jesus really stretches me so many times, but He knows that when He doesn't do that I get lazy, so I guess I will trust Him, and journey on.

I love Jesus...
but I want to be In Love with Him so much more.