Sunday’s sermon made me cry. I finally get the whole concept of crying tears of joy. Let me give you the context. After hanging out with friends Saturday night, I had to make a cheesecake for our prayer meeting Sunday afternoon. It was 1:00am when I started, so using our handy-dandy hand mixer was out of the question, since it could awake everyone in the house. The trouble was that there were little lumps of cream cheese in my batter. That may not seem like a big deal, but at 2:30am it was. I was so worried that it would turn out horribly. I call it a Martha moment. Finally, I calmed down, realizing that people made cheesecakes before the invention of the electric mixer and that the state of the universe didn’t depend on my cheesecake being perfect. Fast forward to Sunday’s sermon.
It was all about cross-cultural ministry and the idea of all different kinds of people becoming one in Christ. At the end, my pastor called up one of my youth group teens who was born in Sierra Leone. It’s funny that I call him MY youth group teen, considering the fact that so many people have put so much time and energy into building a relationship with him and his sister (one sows, another waters, but God gives the increase). After talking about how my youth group teen became a part of CrossWinds, Pastor Dave asked him if he was going to be baptized at our baptism service at the end of the month. He said yes…and that’s when the tears came. Forget the priority of keeping emotional control in public, forget the priority of making a beautiful cheesecake so that everyone can see that I’m a great cook, forget being afraid of sharing Jesus with people because they might not like me, forget everything else. This was a Mary moment. This was a moment of sitting at the feet of Jesus in awe of what He has done in the life of a kid that I care about. This was a moment that makes carting kids back and forth week after week infinitely and eternally worth it. To God be the glory.
July 14, 2008 at 11:52 pm |
Hey, I’m new to this things and was just browsing some sites and came across yours. I completely understand the struggle of priority. The ladies I work with have been doing this Bible study and this past week was about priority and I found myself wondering why it was so hard to just put God first. Anyways, you seem to have made a ministry out of blogging which I think is a great thing. God Bless!
July 16, 2008 at 1:12 pm |
Welcome to blogging, Tiffany! Sometimes it’s so easy to be disracted from God: a little thing called idolatry. People are very proficient at idolatry. We were made to worship. The question then becomes what we will worship. Like Jesus told Martha in Luke 10, only one thing matters, and that’s Him. Thanks for visiting!