What was He Thinking?

Maybe you’ve said that before, when someone did something incredibly foolish.  "What was he thinking?"  Yet there are times when the question is sincere.  You may really want to know.   "What is going on in his/her mind?"

 

Each Sunday morning,  I "preach".   Basically, I open a Bible and talk about God, the Bible, and life for about  thirty minutes.  On one level, that probably seems like a very audacious thing to do.

 

Talk about God?
Talk about the Bible?
Talk to people about their lives?

 

I suppose that could be a very "heady" thing to do.  Are there any three topics more profound or important than these three?  No wonder one of the caricatures of ministers includes the preacher with the overinflated ego.  One of the temptations in ministry is to develop a sense of exaggerated self- importance.

 

Yet, I know that the Sunday AM message is important.  Men and women live in the dust of the world all week long.  Life can be very hard.  We are complex people full of history, emotion, thinking, and….sin.

 

Two things I am very conscious of:

 

1. The people who are in the assembly.  I have been at this church (Crestview Church of Christ, Waco, Tx) for 12 years.  By now, people have basically "sized me up."  One question that we all have about someone in my role is, "Can I trust him?"  Over the years, I have talked to many, many people about their marriages, their children, their sins, their inadequacies, and their doubts.  People have to know that you will not use this information to hurt them.

 

When I look at people in our assembly, I often see some who are leaning in, ready to hear.  Meanwhile, there is a guy to my right who is often asleep just a few minutes into the message.  I often think, "How can I best communicate this so that these people will open their hears to connect with God. 

 

2.  The living God who longs to be treasured by each one of us.  The power of the moment is not found in how clever I am, or how smart I am, or how much I know.  The power of the moment rests in God who works on hearts at that very moment.  When God and an open heart connect, it is like two hot wires touching one another.  Something happens!

 

In the meantime, I don’t want to take myself too seriously…