Sermon

In relation to 01.17.10 6:00 PM Service…

This was a message that I really wish had been delivered on Sunday morning when the sanctuary is a little more full, but I could tell why he saved it for the evening service. There was a great deal of loving truth in Ron’s message, and I’m not sure that after the church just got through with Dr. Bob loving on us for several months if this message would have made Ron many friends when preached to the Sunday morning crowd. I thought it was a great message, but the fact is it called for people to do a little more self-reflection than most of us feel comfortable with doing.

The general theme was that you have to give if you want to receive. And then when you have received, you keep giving, because the blessings you have received aren’t yours and belong to God anyway. The focus was on investing in the lost and the hurt in our community so that we could receive them into our family. The message could be most simply stated with “You reap what you sow.” And the fact is that if we aren’t investing in our community, we can’t expect to see our church body grow from a community willing to invest back into the church. Not only is this true, but we can use these same principles when it comes to our families, our friends, our job, our finances, and virtually every facet of our lives.

While it’s true that we will incur negative events (the ramifications of a fallen world), even when we have sewn good seed, the fact is we shouldn’t expect anything else if we aren’t sewing good seed. I didn’t see this as “health and wealth” message that stated, “Hey, go out there and do good things, and you will surely be blessed a million times over by the Lord.” I heard a message that actually stated, “Giving and doing the work God has called you to do is the REAL blessing. And when He rewards His faithful servant, He will give you a chance to be blessed even more by presenting you with yet another opportunity to give.”

I highly recommend that if you didn’t make it to yesterday’s evening service, you watch the ustream video linked at the top of this article.