I’m a dum-dum hard head…Again!

I have a good friend that I like to kid about his church. His denomination is different than the one that I have been attending and just to annoy him I refer to his church as a cult, (among other things). Additionally I constantly harass him about a few points that his denomination believes that are very difficult, (impossible), to back up with the Bible.

Nonetheless a great group of believers gather there each and every Sunday to worship the Lord that they love, and none are more fervent in their commitment to Jesus Christ or more committed to spreading the good news of the Gospel than my friend.

Lately I have met with Anglicans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Catholics, United Methodists, non-denominationals, and Baptists and all are different and yet the same. They serve a single purpose of worshipping God, but each goes about it in a different way.

Last night I attended a wild game supper hosted by Thomasville 1st Baptist Church. The food was great and I would estimate that over a thousand men attended. After our feast we went into the auditorium and we listened to the guest speaker. This man had hunted Africa and he described some hunts and cleverly tied them into the struggles of life with his point being we cannot find what we need in life any other way than through Jesus Christ. God is the only thing that can fill the void in our lives; money won’t do it, taking fabulous trophies hunting the world won’t do it; nothing aside from a personal relationship with Christ can make us whole.

To be entirely candid, I didn’t like his style. He told a couple of jokes that I had already heard and others I figured out the punch line long before it was delivered. At times he shouted and dramatically walked back and forth on the stage and at one point even got down prone on his belly to simulate stalking a kudu. It seemed to me that he was overly dramatic and dragging his points out ever so slowly and repeating them over and over like we were school children unable to grasp the slightest point. To be honest I wasn’t getting a lot out of this speaker, and I caught myself hoping that it would soon end and I could head back to Honey Lake.

When he was through speaking he asked us to bow our heads and after explaining the salvation plan in what seemed to me to be an interminably long fashion, he asked anyone who didn’t know Jesus Christ as their Savior and yet wanted to know Him to stand up while the rest of us kept our heads bowed and there should be no looking around.

Okay I will admit to being one of those guys, (always the rebel), who peeked to see who was standing, and to my utter amazement people were standing up all over the auditorium. Old men, middle aged men and young men were standing up for Jesus and committing their lives to Him by the droves everywhere I looked. Some wore business suits and others blue jeans; there was no commonality, but people all over that auditorium were obviously deeply moved by this speaker. Undeniably the souls of these men were stirred and the Holy Spirit was traversing the aisles making men from all walks of life understand that a life without Jesus is equivalent to no life at all.

Hmmm I thought about this on the ride home. As a result of all of the hard work of hundreds of faithful 1st Baptist church men and women who gathered together beginning before daylight to work hard to prepare a feast for over a thousand men, and others who prayed fervently that the event would be successful, and the effort of this speaker who traveled from afar to deliver his message of hope, men were saved from eternal damnation and will join Jesus Christ in heaven and be with Him for all of eternity. HOO-RAH!

I suppose I might add and all of this was done in spite of my cynical skepticism over the effectiveness of the speaker. I’m admitting to it here in order that a lesson might be learned just in case there are other dum-dum hard heads like me out there.

Lesson learned: We as believers are the body of Christ. Different approaches are needed, (indeed necessary), to reach the masses. Some like pomp, ceremony and somber silence to the point that a spider can be heard walking across the floor, and others enjoy clapping, shouting, singing, and one couldn’t hear a herd of screaming elephants running through their service.

Home spun humor and jokes that I might think are corny might make the fellow sitting next to me laugh until his britches split and all the while driving home a point to him that could be driven no other way. I might think the service is unnecessarily long while the gentlemen sitting next to me doesn’t want it to end and is savoring every word as it draws him towards Jesus like a moth to a light. An intellectual discussion of the Big Bang and its relationship to the Garden of Eden might make some want to puke, while others would be entirely fascinated.

Okay, I get it Lord – My bad! I understand a little more about this phenomenon today than yesterday and I hope you readers do as well. We are one body comprised of many parts and that single body worships one God just like His word states.

Go to a church that you feel comfortable in this weekend; my only suggestion is that at the end of the day that Jesus Christ dying for our sins in order that we might live forever in heaven with Him is what is being preached. If you dance in the aisles, sing and shout, toss rattlesnakes into the air, tell corny jokes, crawl across the floors, or sit piously in somber serenity in your best stoic imitation of a statue while candles are lit and little tiny bells are rung and it brings you to a greater love and understanding of our Creator and the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ, TER-R-R-R-IFIC!

1 Cor. 12:12
Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one bodywhether Jews or Gentiles, slave or freeand we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.