John 4 – The Nexus

This past Sunday we kicked off a brand-new teaching series. For the next four weeks we are talking about who exactly we are as a church. Who did God design First Baptist Oakboro to be for the present season? He made us to be a people with whom anyone can connect to grow in Christ and reach out for His kingdom. What does that mean? Let’s dig into the first part, connecting, today. Don’t miss the rest!

When Come and See Becomes Go and Tell

Have you ever been to Allen Fieldhouse? Maybe you don’t even know what Allen Fieldhouse is. That’s okay. Not everyone is enlightened at the same time. Those of us who have walked that path already must teach those who have yet to discover it. I’m kidding…sort of. Allen Fieldhouse, named after famous coach Forest “Phog” Allen, is where the Kansas Jayhawks play basketball, and have been since 1955. No less an authority than Wikipedia calls it “one of college basketball’s most historically significant and prestigious buildings.” The actual playing surface in the fieldhouse is the James Naismith Court, who was, of course, the inventor of the sport and the first Kansas men’s basketball coach. His original rules of basketball are actually on display in the fieldhouse. When it comes to college basketball – and with apologies to fans of…anybody else – there simply isn’t a better place to play. If we lived close enough, and I was trying to convince you to be a Kansas fan (granting that if we lived close enough you’d probably already be a fan), I’d tell you to come and see a game there and then you’d know. If you are interested in connecting with the Kansas basketball nation (there’s not a Kansas football nation as most people like to cheer for a team that finishes above .500 more than about once a generation), that “come and see” invitation will make all the difference. I make that invitation because I’ve gone and I’ve seen and I know that if you go there too, you’ll experience what I did.

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Knowing we’re supposed to love the hard to love people in our lives, even knowing the theological reasons for that, is one thing. Actually seeing it in practice is something entirely different. This past Sunday as we continued in our series, Hard to Love, we took a look at a remarkable story of the kind of transformation that can take place when we let love loose into our hard to love situations. You don’t want to miss this.

Love’s Transformation

Let me start this morning with a tough question. In fact, I want you to close your eyes in order to answer this one. How would you respond if your child was murdered? That’s an emotional question, I know, so go ahead and feel that emotion for a minute. Let me show you a picture. This is a picture of Mary Johnson and her son. In 1993 Mary’s son, Laramiun Byrd, was 20 years old. One night he went to a party with some friends. As perhaps many young men are wont to do he did a little bit of fronting at the party to the benefit of his ego and his image in front of his friends. Now, this might not be such a big deal on a normal night, but this particular party was also attended by a 16-year-old young man named O’Shea Israel. O’Shea took up Laramium’s challenge and did a bit of fronting of his own. After all, he couldn’t be made to look bad in front of his own friends. Things digressed from there and the next morning Mary got a call asking if Laramiun had come home the night before. He hadn’t. Not long after some officers arrived to let her know that he had been murdered at the party. In an instant—perhaps just as you imagined—her world completely fell apart.

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