Some things we need to ponder when we pray to God up yonder!

I'm sure all of us have had our moments. You know, when we speak before we think. I call it foot-in-mouth disease. Those moments where we open mouth and insert foot! Though we do that all to often in life as we communicate with others, our communication with God should not be like that. Some things we need to ponder when we pray to God up yonder.

We need to ponder the caution of prayer.
Many things in life have caused us to approach with caution. Whether it's a deer crossing sign on the highway while we're driving down the road of it's a caution light at a dangerous intersection, some things we have to be cautious of before approaching too carelessly. One of the things Jesus points out from the Gentiles is their use of vain or meaningless repetitions. You can find examples of these in 1 Kings 18:26 and Acts 19:34. It doesn't take many words to get our Father's attention, so we need to be cautious of these meaningless repetitions.

We need to ponder the content of prayer.
Sometimes people can say a whole lot about a lot of nothing. They might have used a whole lot of words, but they have used the content equivalent of a twinkie: not much to it inside! Jesus teaches a sample prayer where He uses the following content:
Adoration - praising God (Hallowed be your name)
Direction - God's will is to be done over ours (use Jesus as our example in Mt. 26:39-44)
Supplication - giving us our daily bread (God is the supplier of these needs)
Confession - asking forgiveness of our sins (implying we are sinful creatures in need of this)
Protection - God will protect us from the Devil (1 Cor. 10:13)
Content is very important as we communicate with our heavenly Father.

We need to ponder the contingency of prayer.
Have you ever heard the phrase everything hinges on this? It means if this doesn't happen, then other things will not occur. Jesus says our forgiveness from God is contingent on our forgiving others. Consider Matthew 18:21ff and Ephesians 4:32. We need to make sure that we're showing this to others if we want the same from God.

Not too long ago, Tiger Woods claimed he had committed transgressions. We need to ponder these things with our prayer life in order to receive the ultimate transgression protection!

Secret Service

We all have our mental images we associate with the term secret service. Whether you think about the men in suits protecting the President or something else, they have a job to do. The job was instituted to protect the President and combat financial fraud in our country. While that is a great role in our government, there is an even greater type of secret service in which we need to be involved.

Our Lord wants us to be enlisted in His secret service. In Matthew 6:1, Jesus says "beware of practicing your righteosness before men to be seen by them, otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven." He then proceeds to contrast the ways hypocrites (Pharisees) do good things with the motive of being seen by others with the way His followers should do these things in a secret fashion.

He addresses three areas of service that should be done secretly: giving in secret, praying in secret and fasting in secret. For a better description of what Jesus means by this, please listen to the sermon link titled "Secret Service." Jesus is very clear when He points out that Christianity is not a spectator sport! Are you enlisted in the Secret Service?

Tough Love

The date was June 28, 1997. Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson had gathered in Las Vegas for a heavyweight boxing match to see who was the best. This was their rematch, and it drew lots of attention. During the match, Tyson kept complaining because Holyfield was giving head butts which had given Tyson cuts, but the referee wasn't calling anything. Tyson resorted to biting Holyfield's ear. After a warning from the referee, the boxing continued with a still frustrated Tyson. Finally, he spit out his mouthpiece again and bit Holyfield on the other ear, this time removing part of his ear which he spit out on the boxing mat. Mayhem resulted from this action as people were watching all of this drama unfold. Do you think Holyfield was viewig Tyson as an enemy at that point?

Last week I preached on resisting the urge to retaliate from Matthew 5:38-42. Do you think Holyfield was thinking about the "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" scripture, or in his case, ear for an ear? In fact, I used this illustration to introduce the concept of tough love. Jesus made it clear that loving our enemies is tough, but we are called as followers of His to display the type of loving actions toward those who are in opposition to us. The duty of tough love demands loving action toward our enemies. The difficulty of tough love challenges us to rise above the standards of the world where it's easy to love those who are lovable, but it's difficult to love those who seem unlovable. The demonstration of tough love was already shown by our heavenly Father (Rom. 5:8), and it comes with the expectations that we are to show that kind of love in return (1 Jn. 4:11).

To whom do you need to show some tough love?

I Did It!

Last night I preached without notes, and I'm glad I did. I was able to maintain so much more eye contact with my audience, and it felt great to be able to present the lesson in that fashion. I am grateful to Marlin Connelly and Steven Guy who spoke about this last week.

The sermon last night was "Resist the Urge to Retaliate" from the Sermon on the Mount. In the sermon last night, I covered the following points from Jesus:
1) When others insult you
2) When others sue you
3) When others use you
4) When others cheat you

I hope you find it helpful, as I started off with a story of revenge of the noted Judge, Samson.

I'll Have to See It to Believe It!

You never know what you're going to see living in Maury County, Tennessee. Several years ago before Dianna and I were married, I was over at her house one particular day. She told me she had seen something cross the road in front of her on the way to work one morning. It looked like a deer, but not really. It hopped instead of running. It kind of looked like a kangaroo. I thought she was crazy. I would have to see it to believe it. Interestingly enough, her dad was sitting in the chair and said he hadn't told anybody, but he had seen something like that on the way to work in Nashville one day travelling north on Leipers Creek Road. I personally thought they were both crazy until a few years later, I heard about a deer hunter who had shot a kangaroo nearby. Go figure, huh?

The other day I was travelling north on Highway 31 having just crossed over Rutherford Creek when I looked to the right and saw a helicopter sitting on top of one of the powerline towers. I thought I was seeing things, but glancing again that seems to be what I saw. I avoided going back to see if that's truly what I had seen. I know that's what I saw. Later that evening I told Dianna what I saw. She said she had one word for me: KANGAROO!

There have been many people throughout the ages who have had to see things to believe them. There was a royal official who heard that Jesus was at Cana of Galilee, so he came from Capernaum to ask Him to come heal his sick son. Jesus replies "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe" (Jn. 4:48). Many people in life have that mentality. However, we are told that true faith is a blind faith, since we can't physically see what we believe (Heb. 11:1). Then again, the Hebrews writer tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12:2). How can we do that if we can't physically see Him? John writes "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 Jn. 5:13).

Thanks be to God that we have the written Word so we can see Jesus. We don't have to go through this life looking for something to believe in, because He's made it known to us. Do you believe?

Preaching Without Notes?

I just returned from a most excellent presentation delivered by Steven Guy and Marlin Connelly on the art of preaching without notes. Veterans of the pulpit, these helpful tactics of preparation and presentation made me realize this was the best preachers' luncheon I had ever attended. I appreciate these godly men for what they do in His kingdom, but also for what they delivered to us today. God help us to be as effective as possible when we deliver the Word of God every Sunday.
I also wanted you to note the latest sermon addition from Matthew 5:33-37 where Jesus talks about making oaths. I hope you'll take a listen and give me some feedback. To swear or not to swear; that is the question.
By the way, Brother Guy and Brother Connelly have challenged me to attempt this Sunday's preaching without notes, and I've only done it one other time. Pray for me!