January is a great time to re-evaluate your life and what you spend your time doing. I want to make sure I'm doing more things that matter and fewer things that don't.
Truthfully, I just enjoy putting my thoughts down in writing, sharing them with others, and hoping that you might find them worthwhile to read.
In the past, this blog was mostly about churches and using social media, though I wavered from that some. For now, I'm going to keep an focus on social media in churches, but sprinkle in a lot of my own thoughts about what I'm thinking about or dealing with in my own walk with Christ and struggle to be a good husband and father. There might be an occasional rant about how bad Cleveland sports are. But yeah, mostly social media and church stuff.
OK, that stuff aside, I'm feeling very small today.
I had the "brilliant" idea a few months ago that I would begin this year with a sermon series on the BIG questions. I would call the series "Why?" You know, why do bad things happen to good people, why aren't my prayers answered, stuff like that. He's a video trailer for the series:
More than that, I realize I'm about to stand up in front of a bunch of people this Sunday and give them my very inadequate answers to really important questions. When I was making the video above and put in the words "the answers will change your life," that was maybe more of a prayer for myself than a declaration.
God, give me the answers to these questions so you can change someone's life.
It's a small feeling, to feel as if you are charged with explaining the workings of Almighty to God's people. It's like being an interpreter who only kind of speaks the other language. All the while, the church is clamouring, "Tell us what He is saying! We know its important, we want to understand!"
So do I.
But here is where my job gets really fun. I get to dive in to exploring these questions and answers. I get to seek God in prayer. I get to examine my own life and how I've answered the questions at different times in my life. And I know, on Sunday morning, I'm not making an argument for how well I understand a certain topic. Instead, I'm making an argument for the Gospel: that God loves us, that Jesus came for us, and that through Him, we can have the Life that has been promised to us from the beginning of time. And when it's all over and the last hymn has been sung and I'm walking out the back of the sanctuary, I will feel even more inadequate than ever, thinking I've not even come close to explaining the fulness of the goodness of God. Because it's impossible to do in 25 minutes.
And yet...somehow...God will take a little sliver of something I say...and use it to change someone's heart.
I still don't know why bad things happen to good people...but I'm starting to understand why some bad things have happened to me. And this Sunday, I'm going to make the strongest case I can that in the midst of the suffering of the innocent, there is a God who loves you more than you ever thought possible.
And that God has allowed me to have the best job in the world.
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