This past Sunday we continued in our series, Being Useful. We’ve so far talked about faith and virtue and knowledge and self-control. Those are all great things, but living in a constant pursuit of those can eventually become exhausting. If we’re going to manage that tall order, there’s something else we’re going to need. Fortunately, this next thing is the next item on Peter’s list. Keep reading to find out what it is.
Keep at It
Have you ever wanted to give
up? You pick the reason. Have you ever been at a point where you were
seriously considering throwing up your hands and walking away from something? I think we all hit those places at one time
or another in life. It could have been
something as insignificant as a game.
One of the lessons we are slowly teaching our boys is that you can’t
quit just because you’re losing. Any
other parents have to fight that particular battle before? Perhaps, though, your encounter with this particular
wall was somewhat more significant.
Maybe it was a class in school?
It could have been a job when you didn’t already have another one lined
up. Perhaps it was even a
relationship.
So, we know that being useful in our relationship with Jesus requires faith, virtue, and knowledge. But how do we consistently do anything positive with those? We need something else. In this fifth part of our series, Being Useful, we talked about what this next thing is. Thanks for reading.
Staying on Track
When I was growing up, I had the great fortune of going to a church with a whole bunch of godly men to watch as examples of how to do the Christian life well. It was a gift that has kept on paying dividends in the years since. There’s a call to our great men in there, but that’s for another sermon. One of these men was named Martin Coleman. Martin was an engineer and was one of those guys who could do or build pretty much anything. My parents and his kids are about the same age and his grandkids are just a little bit younger than me. We all grew up together as pieces and parts of one big church family. That’s part of the reason I so love what we have here at First Baptist—which, incidentally, was the name of that church too.
This past Sunday, we continued our new series, Being Useful, by looking at the first character trait on Peter’s list that will make us more useful to Jesus. Item number one: Faith. What is faith? What does it look like to have faith? And how does growing in faith make us more useful to Jesus? Read on to find out.
Making God Happy
We were sitting in
a restaurant the other day and over my shoulder a family had been seated at a
pretty large table. They needed the
space. The waitress came over like she
would for any customer and took drink orders.
Not long after, they called her back.
They wanted to make some special requests. Then they called her back again. Then she came to take their food orders…and
they made some special requests. Then
the drinks came out. And those weren’t
right. The appetizers were wrong
too. So was their dinner. The manager came to the table at least once,
maybe twice. It took a couple of trips
by the waitress to get dessert ordered and right too. Now, this was a busy restaurant and certainly
mistakes are occasionally made in the industry.
But as we looked around the room, we didn’t notice anybody else getting
the amount of specialized attention they were getting. Now, they were never ugly that we could tell,
but the fact that just about all of their stuff wasn’t quite right began to
suggest a pattern. The pattern wasn’t a
restaurant that couldn’t get its stuff together. The problem was a family that was hard to
please.
This past Sunday morning we kicked off a brand-new teaching series called Being Useful. That’s something we all want, isn’t it? We want to be able to confidently say that we have made a difference in the world. Our heart pulses with that beat. Over the next few weeks, we are going to be examining the character that will guarantee we reach our goal in the areas that matter most. I look forward to going on this journey with you. Thanks for reading.
The Secret to Mattering Most
Let’s start this morning with a quick pop culture survey for you. Shout it out if you know the answer. What do Dude Perfect, PewDiePie, HolaSoyGerman, and elrubiusOMG all have in common? They are all YouTube stars. PewDiePie leads the pack with 96 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. The other three all sit north of 35 million, with Dude Perfect leading the second-tier pack at over 42 million. A lot of subscribers translates into a lot of money because of the way YouTube shares ad revenue with its viral video producers. In 2018, Forbes Magazine reported that the highest grossing YouTube channel was not actually one of the top 10 by subscriber totals, but rather Ryan ToysReview. This seven-year-old whose channel started when he was four and features him playing with toys…really, that’s it…made him (and his proud parents) $22 million. The Dude Perfect channel—which is produced by some friends from Texas A&M whose stated goal is to glorify Christ in all they do—made $20 million. That kind of income allows them to keep making videos like this one as their full-time job.
This past Sunday morning we wrapped up our series, Bible Stories to Make You Squirm, by looking at another doozy. When Jesus entered the world as a baby and King Herod found out about it, he murdered all the boys two years and under in Bethlehem. What we are supposed to do with this and what it means for us is what we talk about here. Keep reading to learn more.
Also, this week I am going to make some changes to my posting schedule. Producing two posts, three days a week isn’t such a big deal for me on the writing side, but as someone who reads other blogs, I know that trying to read two posts on any given day is a lot. You’ve hung in here with me as I keep learning how to do this better over the last couple of years, and I am supremely grateful. Going forward, I am going to move to five weekly posts–one each day, Monday through Friday, all at 8:00 am. Mondays will be the previous day’s sermon or a Digging in Deeper post if I’ve had the weekend off. Tuesdays and Thursdays will be the usual Morning Musings. Wednesdays and Fridays will be Digging in Deeper posts (usually just a bit longer than the Morning Musings or else a chance to go a little deeper into a conversation we have started on Tuesday or Thursday). Saturdays and Sundays will still be off, although I may start adding some guests posts on the weekends in the not-too-distant future. Hopefully this will make for better pacing for you, the faithful reader, while keeping you still interested in making connections between the Word and the world. Thanks for sticking with me all this time. I’m looking forward to many more good conversations in the days ahead. Blessings to you!
The Hard Road
Most cultures have a set of proverbs, adages, axioms that form the popular foundation on which the bulk of its people stand when it comes to thinking about how they are going to get by and get along with one another. Many of our culture’s most popular proverbs come from the wit and wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, one of our Founding Fathers. Many of these you probably know well: Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man…healthy, wealthy, and wise. A penny saved is…a penny earned. Don’t put off for tomorrow…what you can accomplish today. Some of his proverbs are a little less familiar, but still really good: He who sows thorns should not go barefoot. The one who is content has enough; the one who complains has too much. Wealth is not his that has it, but his that enjoys it.
The Nexus 