So after spending two years in ministries overseas, I found myself with the grand mission of cleaning toilets and setting up chairs at church. I also found myself, as the church had decided over the two years I was away to move to where people needed the gospel, setting up chairs and cleaning the only toilet in a-hole-in-the-wall concert venue on fourth ave, the main bar district in Tucson.
Glorious, it was not, and after two years in the mission field I had totally ended up where I didn’t expect.
But God has a funny way of doing things.
Little did I know when I called and asked what I could do to help, Dave was in California telling a friend he needed just that. God put me in a place where I could serve, and while toilets were bad God was about to bring me to something that I was even more uncomfortable with. Preaching
A couple weeks after I returned home, Dave asked if I could talk once a month or so and give him a bit of a reprieve from juggling being a father, a business owner, and preaching each and every week.
So he asked me to take on one sermon a month as we finished up a sermon series in the book of Luke. My first sermon was on: Luke 21:25-38.
Now let’s get two things straight…
1: Charles Spurgeon I am NOT
Sure, I had spent two years in the mission field, but that involved doing bible studies and 1-on-1 discipleship. Up to that point, the closest I had gotten to preaching was screaming rules over a crowd of nearly 60 college students trying to teach them Bunco for a bizarrely effective social event we did one week at Deakin University.
I wasn’t even sure where to begin. How do you know what to talk about? And let’s be honest, the idea of getting up in front of people, even my friends, and speaking for anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour explaining a text from the bible was daunting.
2: The passage wasn’t John 3:16
I had this idea about preachers. It was this strange impression of a well-educated figure who was able to quote the majority of the Bible without breaking a sweat. One who could come against any difficult passage and fly through it with the greatest of ease. There were only a handful of verses that I felt I really had that much of a handle on. If I had been given John 3:16 or Ephesians 2:8-10 or a number of other passages, I might have had a bit more confidence. But I was given Luke 21:25-38.
If you haven’t read it, click on the link and check it out. It deals how the sun and moon and stars testifying to the coming of the Kingdom of God and the world being judged before the Son of Man (Jesus). It even had the following line: “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all has taken place” which is talked about with great vigor by scholars of “end-times”
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t feel ready at all to handle explaining/expounding/extracting much of that passage at all.
But Dave asked, and I “said” I was willing to serve, so after weeks of preparation and prayer I set down the toilet bowl cleaner and tried to honor and glorify God as I attempted to talk about Luke 21:25-38*.
* There is a recording of this sermon somewhere. I will try to look it up. If I am able to find it AND if there isn’t any horrendous doctrine 🙂 I’ll post it on here.
Thoughts from a Runner 